PS 3527 
,184 
S65 
1914 
Copy 1 



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Soul 



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^y David C, cNjmmo 



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Copyrighted 1914 
By David C. Nimmo 



Times Printing Co., Detroit, Mich. 



prffat^ 




N putting forth a fourth hook of verse that 
cannot find a publisher, a reader or a 
friend, I hardly know what to say. Per- 
haps the plain hlunt truth is best. In 

the opinion of publishers, the persons to 

whom i presented copies of the work, and to my nar- 
rower circle of acquaintances, my poetry, to put it in 
the expression of the street, is "not worth a salted 
damn." I have sometimes agreed in the judgment 
and wished it were all in oblivion. Again when read- 
ing I have felt a quickening of spirit and been re- 
stored to faith. Perhaps it is but another of the in- 
finite deceptions that selfishness plays upon the self. 
It is certainly a hard time for poetry. A communi- 
cation concerning a book of verse is sometimes not 
even answered; some publishers will not look at such 
a manuscript and one declares there is but one chance 
in a thousand for such a venture. Why is this? 
Poetry has long been considered the very heart of 
literature and "the breath and fine spirit of all knowl- 
edge." No doubt a complexity of causes causes the 
present state of public opinion, but cannot one of the 
chief reasons be found in the poor quality of much of 
the present day verse. It seems to have everything 
of poetry but a head and heart. It does not say much 
and lacks the vitality that is the soul and creates a 
body of beauty and music. It lacks the great char- 
acteristics of life — passion, spontaneity, freshness, 
penetration and delight. Give us the real genuine 
lyrical virtue, something that has the man, the lover, 
the patriot, the child, the philosopher, the sinner and 
the saint in it — give us the poetry written in the 
Campus by one of the great actors of life and it will 
wake up the poet asleep in every man to greet it with 
ejeculations of pleasure. Whether my own verse has 
any of this esisential quality, I leave to the judgment 
of the few readers it may chance to find. 



A book of 'Soul Songs' would be my highest con- 
ception of a volume of poetry. It would contain in 
befitting form the realest utterances of the soul of 
man. It would be a translation out of the great heart 
of Life when at the summit of her passion and power. 
It would be a biologic document written by the uni- 
versal spirit and as such be the greatest page in the 
vast book of nature. Such books are rare. They are 
the ideal. Few, few in the whole history of the world 
can write them and just a little larger few can read 
them when produced. 

With such a view I hesitate to put the contents 
of this book under this title. The first and last and 
a few between songs are properly in place. Other 
songs scattered through three other books and some 
yet unpublished I would like to bring under this head 
if I had the time to revise them and the means to re- 
print. The object of the present publication is not 
proper classification but the preservation of a few 
manuscripts that would go into the waste if anything 
happened. A number of these are properly. Civic 
Songs, which I have here inserted with the faint hope 
of getting the former book to some attention. 

These Songs, from one of the nameless, numberless, 
rebellious slaves at the wheels of labor, I send forth and 
trust it will receive from a few the judgment that 
renders the ripeness and integrity of the mind. 

D. C. N. 

September 1, 1913. 



. Contents 






Page 

A World Sigh 7 

The Two Travelers 22 

The Mocking Bird 22 

A Murmur 28 

Let the Thinker Think .' 29 

The Idol Breaker 30 

All We Learn : 32 

The Muses 32 

Large and Small 32 

Man 33 

The Center of Gravity, . . • • , . , 33 

The Golden Age , 35 

Blindness 39 

The Machinist's Song 40 

The Song of the Suffragette 41 

A Boston City Song 42 

A Denver City Song 43 

A New York State Song 44 

A Massachusetts State Song 45 

A Minnesota State Song 47 

An Illinois State Song 48 

Science 49 

The Sweetest of the Sweet 52 

Electric Lights 54 

The Undeclining 56 

The Man With the Punch 57 

The Price of Bread 58 



Sleep and Dream 59 

Rebellion ; 59 

The Battle of Brooklyn 60 

Old Glory 71 

Queen of the Ages 73 

The Citizen's Song 74 

The Socialistic Slogan 76 

March Song for Socialists 78 

The Handwriting 79 

Washington 81 

Lincoln 83 

Grant 85 

Wilson 88 

Emerson 90 

To Astronomy 92 

The Constellations 95 

Art and Oblivion 98 

Let the Thinker Think. 99 

Source and End 100 

A Flower 100 

A Premonition .101 

Rejected 102 

Mama's Answer 103 

Nature Helps 106 

Nature's Bouquet 106 

The Dandelion 107 

The Ideals 112 

My Piece of Life 115 

Go, My Songs of Soul 130 



A WORLD SIGH. 

What is written lias been writ 

And he that reads can read; 
But until the heart is bit 

To bleed and bleed and bleed 
Without God or man to fit 

A balsam on its need 
Thou wilt never find the wit 

That doth the spirit feed. 

' Oh Love, thou art the spirit most divine 
Of all existing being. Thy presence fills 
The universe, and is the heart that wills 
All life. The green and golden globes that shine 
And lamp the void are fed with living wine 

From thy celestial breast and glance. 

Such motions, majesty and lance 
Of brightest splendors as forever kills 

The undevout and prides that stream 

In man, Oh who could ever dream 
Such beauty, power and harmony divine 
Could be and be sustained by any heart but thine! 

But in this world — Oh is it here alone 
Of all the million multiplied spheres that hail 
Thy gifts? — thy name and nature are in veil. 
As if a solid starless night was thrown 
Across the summer sun, and earth was blown 

A coarse of wintry selfishness. 

The elemental natures that dress 
Her living soul with ocean, sky and vale. 

And scarce the scars upon her heart 

Conceal with all their magic art. 
Bear witness with their murmuring looks and lips 
Thy heart and countenance, Oh Love! are in eclipse. 

Thus veiled from thee the unguardianed earth doth sweep 
Her path among the constellated spheres 



As a dishonor among the kingly peers 

Of heaven's host. To them she is a heap 

Of most chaotic ruins. Within her deep 
What titanic elements of life 
Are locked in their convulsive strife! 

What tempest wrath and lightning bolt appears! 
What earthquake, volcano and cyclone 
Her bosom oft has rent and thrown! 

What sweeping flood, frost, drought and hungry flame 
The green-embosomed earth destroy or lasting maim! 

Some withering blast is on the herbless field; 
Some unseen ill eats at the forest's core; 
Some spirit wars in beasts and birds for gore; 
Some poisons too the fountains have unsealed; 
All beasts and things announce the unrepealed 

Curse on the earth. From nature's heart 

Without the touch and time of art 
No flower or fruit reach use or beauty's door. 

Why should the beasts and powers of life 

Have no high end but warring strife? 
Earth from her heart to the splintered mountain 
In polyphonic voice a rasping measure speaks. 

Antagoniisms fierce to the ideal 
Dwells in the heart of nature and her powers. 
All chemical and biologic dowers 
Are driven like a blind mechanic's wheel, 
Without an end, a virtue or a seal. 

An infinite prolific force 

Upon a blinded, blinded course. 
Old Nature in her blindness fierce devours 

The evolutions that might cope 

Against the curse and give her hope. 
Blind in her eyes, strife swelling through her heart, 
But savages and wilds are all that she can bart. 

Dowered thus she swings along her course 
And through the void utters her solemn dirge; 
For all she is, has been and would be, surge 
Her heart and frame with deep, voluminous force 
And echoes far away. These thunders hoarse 

Doth strike her sister wedded spheres. 

Doth fall on their harmonious ears 
As earth discords in heaven's song emerge. 

With silent awe, uncertain fears, 

Each listens whence the sound appears. 
Oh what a drawn-out diapason curse 
To echo from our sphere throughout the universe! 

8 



The long courses of her sons so mortal 
Whose destiny is but to find a birth 
And faitli and fellowship above the earth, 
Then quick to pass beyond the shadowed portal 
To join the hosts forever more immortal; 

With glancing eye of heart or mind 

Beholds that line and is not blind 
With grief, as when death falls on lover's mirth! 

To see the loved and best created 

With sense and self and shadows mated, 
To see life's line exceeds a wise belief. 
Astounds angelic ranks and burdens them with grief. 

Our human nature is disorganized 
From all that doth environ. It is antithetic 
To humanity, to the rich prophetic 
Skies, to nature's fabric, to its God devised 
Constitution and the idealized 

Virtues the Divine inspires 

To wake and feed our best desires. 
The conscience is dethroned and heretic 

Sense's dark impulsive power 

Is rebel to the spirit's dower. 
All gifts have some lack, fullness or alloy 
As failures certain make, embitter and destroy. 

Yes, yes! In the far ancestral founts of life 
Some mystery dark was introduced that lives 
From sire to son, and a field for ruin gives 
God's workmanship with potencies most rife. 
This strange mephitic element with strife 

Has poisoned every heart and brain, 

And often God's last blessing, pain. 
Our quintessential essence, the motives, 

From uncreated virtues bent. 

And fell in that same steep descent 
As the primal godlike purities that fell 
From heaven's right hand thrones to the fire-locked gulfs of hell. 

Some spirit of that dark, infernal region 
Seems still at work, and pours satanic power 
On this descent by which they swift devour 
The heritage of hope. Diverse and legion 
The inspiration which she doth endower, 

So each from his high destined end 

And from his brother's good doth bend. 
All reasonless by blind infatuation 

The human bands and brotherhoods 

Are severed and new multitudes 

9 



Of deadly strifes spring up each day to birth, 
With power and hate and death to all of right and worth. 

The world and man and life and all their powers 
Are tangled up and set against each other, 
And in the heart of the prolific mother 
Is the eternal hunger that devours 
Till man stands up, and in defiance towers 

Above all nature's endless greed. 

He stands at bay, but see him breed 
Strife in the world and with himself and brother. 

Strife, strife, eternal strife 

With passion drives the heart of l:'fe; 
Contention and Resistence ever fight 
And ever rise afresh from each victorious might. 

Centered in the eternal strife is soul. 
Though to all eyes and oft to self unknown, 
Two worlds of life and death have there been thrown 
For mastery. There in the darkness roll 
The mighty powers that guard each moral pole 

Of this dynamic universe. 

Heaven and blessing, hell and curse 
Contend there oft and claim him as their own; 

But most the self and gifts of power 

Contend or suffer or devour. 
Sense and soul, might and right, real and ideal 
Sweep the heart with changing woe but never lasting weal. 

Oft, oft the world doth o'er him sudden sweep, 
And in the strife he's plunged and far immersed; 
Another soul doth in him sudden burst 
And mighty powers no human power can keep 
Through heart and brain with lightning passions leap. 

A blinded elemental force 

He sweeps along a murdering course 
And only death can feed the burning thirst. 

The swelling passions of his ire 

Feeds to each heart contagious fire 
And frenzied war and all she brings to birth 
Sweeps on her murderous course across anarchic earth. 

Oh war, war, war! Oh outward and embodied state 
Of man's own nature! The unregenerate man 
Has all the elements of war's infernal ban 
In his vile heart. His selfishness and hate 
Sleep not nor feed till they annihilate 

Obstructs of pride and power and greed. 

Defenceless weak, unarmored need 
Are gloated o'er with eyes of murderous scan. 

10 



The armies and the navies often seem, 
And often seem to be no dream 
As giant men wliom trifles disengage 
And elemental furies within and round them rage. 

What histories hast thou written on the earth 
Of fiery force and vengeance, blood and lust! 
Oh what destroy from grandeur unto dust 
Of most men are and all they hold of worth! 
Which of the long generations whose birth 

Was not eclipsed by thee and thine? 

Which of the years that long untwine 
Was not with stain, deep, crimson stain out thrust? 

What nations never pained and bowed 

When thee and thine together crowd? 
What nations never loud, jubilant and free 
When thou in chains were thrust as hell's hound ought to be? 

Oh inhuman war! Oh infernal birth! 
Thou transformest earth to hell and revels 
Man as drunken, mad and thrice damned devils 
In blood and death, in rapine, fire and lust. The earth 
Could bear the cost and count it more than worth 

If thou couldst riieet an equal mate 

And each the foe annihilate. 
All know beneath life's sun-kissed highland levels 

Wars have their source and leave their stain 

On the lust of pride and power and gain. 
Oh war, as thou the throat of death has crammed 
Thy spirit, works and lore forever deep be damned! 

Still thou Shalt be, for today the nations groan 
Beneath deep marshaled ranks and armaments 
That public fear alone from broil prevents. 
These hounds of hell if this frail leash be thrown — 
Oh restrain! Restrain! Too well the truth is known! 
Not yet the crimson spear and sword 
Shall trim the vine and turn the sward. 
Thy presence we must bear till omnipotence 
All hostile powers from power disown 
And change man's heart and love enthrone. 
Oh deliverance shalt thou ever come 
Since faith is often slain and hope is stricken dumb! 

And other fields then the mangled scattered dead 
Their victims claim of thousand thousands slain. 
Trade and industries, all know they must remain 
For human need, but what heart has never bled 
For boys and girls on hours of labor fed? 
The city's heart each morn doth bleed 

11 



To see them forced by forcing need, 

And early bound by slavery's iron chain. 

The home and school, forest and field 
Should in and round them be unsealed. 

What a sacrifice for a worthless heap of gold 
Do the heavens above and the earth beneafh behold? 

From their short youth until their ripest years 
A hopeless labor is the law of life; 
.For labor without hope is but a strife 
Of selfishness and death, while heaven's spheres 
Of life and love grow blind and disappears. 
The law is: "ToH! Toil! Toil, oh slave!" 
And with no end but for the grave. 
If one rebels then hunger's ragged knife 
Doth tear a gash straight to the heart, 
Which men will see and cold depart. 
No other passion like the curse of gold 
Can change the warming heart to polar icy cold. 

In this intense and concentrated age 
Of selfishness, the workmanship divine 
Though deep defaced, bearing the workman's sign, 
Is cheaper in the mart then what would gage 
The value of a beast. Horses and kine 
Command a larger care than men. 
Machines are under constant ken 
And often dogs are tended by a page. 
Oh human life is more than cheap! 
Oft hunted, murdered to the deep. 
Trade's vast machine turns swifter round and round 
With nought or light regard for thousands ground and ground. 

Oh what a sorrow sight before the wise . 
As they behold at the city's restless heart 
Ten thousand thousand whose life is but a mart 
For profitless exchange! Why do men's eyes 
See not the throned and azure isplendored skies! 

To buy and sell, to get and gain 

Is more than all the gifts of pain, 
Or all the dreams that on her visions dart. 

Men sell themselves, the god in them, 

His jewels their birth which diadem. 
Faith, love and truth, ideals and more are sold 
By hosts of human kind for worthless heaps of gold. 

Wealth now is god and life's supremest art 
Is but to worship her. A golden image 
Is enthroned on an .exalted stage; 
Her dazzling continental splendors dart 

12 



From sea to sea. Oh each remotest part ; 

Of this vast nation's host of men, ' ; 

Beheld! Does not thy prophet ken . j 

Behold the choicest spirits of the age I 

Hearing that sound low prostrate fall i 

To worship her their all in all? ] 

The few that scorn the god that hosts desire I 

Are instant thrust again into a sevenfold fire. ; 

Another class akin to these exchange * ] 

All gifts for public place; their all for power \ 

And honors bright that fade within an hour. : 

And many more, to wisdom still more strange, i 

Barter all high kingdoms if they can range '. 

Where fashion, wealth and pride aglow, ': 

Eat, drink, drive and clothe and show. i 
Most near to these who forfeit equal dower 

Another class hear pleasure's call ; 

And haste to drink her honeyed gall. < 
How many in that swift seducing round 
Deem trifles but the hour and foolishness there found? 

A very few like travelers in a desert land ^ | 

Do seek the fountains that have ever burst ' ,| 

To slake the mind and its consuming thirst ] 

For knowledge, and the right to understand v 

What idealists in their high k'ngdoms planned. ^ 

Some fewer still who seem insane j 

With some wild fancies of the brain j 

Do ever seek their finite bands to burst j 

And in the Uncreated find j 

A purity for heart and mind. ■' 

These last, the wisdom, salt and light of earth, i 

Though scorned and trodden down, but find the ends of birth. ^ 

But, Oh this vast mass! This helpless seething mass ] 

Of unconscious, blind and lost humanity; \ 

Without life or hope of being's destiny, | 

What are they and who cares for them? They pass j 

As mighty herds o'er life's scant pastured grass. j 

No beauty on their eyeballs blind; i 

No kingly thoughts within the mind; i 

No impassioned pulse of eternity; ' 

No love divine within the heart; 

No God doth on their conscience start; .; 

Their souls in rounds of labor, grief and greed, j 

Are dead to all high powers that life alone can feed. ] 

And Life, the ancient mother of the earth j 

Doth breed them with inhuman inhumanity, 1 

13 1 



Are they not flung- with brutal sense-insanity 

Out of the void into this mortal birth? 

And when Thought stands upon the azure girth 

Is she not stricken, pale, aghast, 

To see the poor so crowding past 
In want and grief, in blindness and profanity? 

This mighty mass, without an end^ 

Without a God, a home or friend. 
Harnessed like beasts they draw the world along: 
And underneath all sound is their vast dirge of song. 

Far, far from these, how very few of millions 
Out of the mass as the morning stars do rise 
With undimmed splendor I And what a glad surprise 
To find in the eternal sphere pavilions 
New firmamental lights! What postilions 
Upon fire! What imperial power 
In their right arm! What lightning dower 
Of spirit blaze from their unconquered eyes I 
For each who gain a throne and crown 
What battling hosts must they tread down! 
But Oh how oft when on the summit's height 
Life's gain is found as dross and noon is turned to night! 

Around the golden portal of our birth 
Congregate young strengths and joys and hopes, 
Whose passions scorn the rough ascending slopes 
Of life, for knowledge of rebellious earth 
Can never pierce the consciousness of mirth. 
But Oh how soon, how very soon 
Beneath the height and heat of noon 
The strongest faints and blind in darkness gropes! 
Oh must this life forever slay us? 
■ First a cosmos, then a chaos, 
First ideals, fiery heart and lightning mind, 
Then failure, nor the good, within, before, behind. 

Our desecrated and dethroned ideals. 
Religious faiths and joys and sacred sorrows 
Unsheltered roam time's unhospitable morrows. 
As celestial foreigners in earthly fields, 
Though with ancestral grace and royal seals, 

They seek in vain some mortal heart 

Wherein to dwell and free impart 
What e'en the first archangel gladly borrows. 

Oh what a wilderness for them! 

Oh with what judgments they condemn! 
High heaven's hosts come forth at birth to crown. 
At sunset they are fled or on us darkly frown. 

14 



Yea worse! Love travailing in her bondage \ 

Bost inspire the poet's soaring mind. 1 

These splendors of her new creation are signed | 

In imperishable imagery, and now gage i 

Man's deep descent and his unhallowed rage, j 

These images the most divine, j 

Whose music, power and light shall shine I 

Though ages like the past shall be untwined, j 

These natures pure which recreate ,; 

Who love an*J live and contemplate, ' 

These kingdoms which the smile of God doth crown I 

By hosts and hosts and hosts are scorned and trampled down. j 

The sons of genius, the celestial powers, 

The gifts divine, the hierarchs of worth, t 

The splendors rare that should enlight the earth 1 

And guide her course to those immortal hours ■ 

They see and feel in their high spirit dowers: i 

Who weeps not sorrow's sacred tear i 

Upon the dark and ruined bier ] 

Of this divorce from such prophetic birth 1 ;l 

Their sunlike gifts, their sunl'ke light | 

Serves but to read life's line aright. ; 

Unbalanced, driven, ruined, ashamed and cursed, i 

None, none but them can know how life is strange reversed. J 

Why is this life so lean? Why failure, J 

Disappointment, loss, despondency, remorse? 1 

The spirt's high endowments and the force I 

Of immortality doubtless should insure \ 

Men high careers of progress, and should cure. -; 

The sad disorders of our state. j 

Vast potencies divine and great . 

And prophecies that through all storms endure ■ 

Are felt in will and heart and brain, t 

And kindle 'neath life's stress and strain. i 

Led on by dreams no dream should e'er deceive , 

Ideal worlds pass by and us behind them leave. ( 

Why should the individual and the race 

Be such fiascoes? What infinite ideal ,; 

Can justify the earth's dark history, and repeal i 

The waste of human life, the gifts and grace ' 

Of billioned souls whom chaos doth embrace? ,] 

One, only one of all our line j 

We dream has reached the goal divine. '; 

His few redeemed were found where ruin reels : 

Helpless to the abysmal deep. j 

All else is failure. Oh the reap I 

Of death! Oh the harvests vast of sin and hell! ' 

Oh the loss and bitterness, God, God alone can tell! I 

15 ^ 



Oh Love! two long millenniums have rolled around 
Since thy high priest with sacrifice divine 
Burst with effulgent brightness on the line 
Of selfishness. With a swift tremendous bound 
Some sinful hearts leaped to his sight and sound. 

The promise long has been delayed; 

Hate, greed and strife are still unstayed. 
And stronger grow as each with others twine. 

Still evil ye4^, doth reign supreme; - 

All clearly see in the lights that stream 
The world is unredeemed. The Chr'st who died 
And his creeds of life and love each day is crucified. 

The great institution of the church doth shame 
Her proud pretentions. She is a disgrace 
To God and a glory to herself. Power, place, 
Numbers and wealth, pomp, form and fashion's fame 
Are more than Christ and the Spirit's glowing fiame. 

Without a splendor full unfurled. 

Within a white-washed wrinkled world, 
A scorn of m*in whose p'ercing visions trace 

One life in strange extremest forms. 

A church that ne'er disturbs or storms 
Whatever stands in Love's obstructed way. 
Is the worst restraining power of her divinest day. 

The hgh enthroned, purple and crowned transgressors 
Of position, power, wealth and intelligence. 
O'er the wide hosts of helpless ignorance 
Become still more the strong and proud oppressors. 
The union and new acts of these possessors 

Upon the new horizon's bound 

Cast most portentous sight and sound. 
What dark chaotic dreams will issue hence 

From want and hunger's outraged sleep 

If once their tempest passions leap? 
The strife of life intensifies each day; 
The weak are beasts of burden, the strong are beasts of prey. 

The religious instincts and the deep 
Intuitional sense of the divine 
Seem in a strange decay. The darkest sign 
Of all our time is that such hosts can sleep 
With no more God than horses, kine or sheep. 

No thanksgiving song or prayer for 

Help or confessions upward soar. 
In most no moral nature seems to shine; 

The fundamental pieties 

Of nature, state and families, 
That virtue lent to a less enligthened day 
Seem dying in the strife and slowly pass away. 

16 



A new zeit-geist has risen to control 
The courses of this latter generation. 
Gay Pleasure and her mad infatuation 
Has risen to the throne of life to pole 
The thoughtless world unto another goal. 

As long as thought so long is hope; 

The thinker can stand up and cope 
With nature and all ancient degredation; 

But when the thoughtless rule the world 

Humanity is blindly whirled. 
Gay pleasure doth life's darkest histories write 
And smites with blasphemy the powers of truth and right. 

Atheism, profanity and ignorance, 
Pride, pleasure, falsehood and dishonesty, 
Drunken -^ss and foulest sensuality. 
Material power and lordly competence, 
All, all dark ghouls of selfishness and sense 

Shout: "The earth, the earth is all our own, 

Nor God nor heaven can us dethrone. 
This is our royal day of power and we 

Will blast or bless who bind or free 

Our reign with more intensity. 
God, heaven and angels high are overthrown. 
Bulwarked by ages long the earth is all our own." 

Oh Love, all things are calling out for thee! 
The voice of earth and all her generations 
With thunder song of mountain intonations 
Is gathering round thy throne of victory 
In intercession for the liberty 

From this bondage of corruption 

Into the glory of the children 
Of God. Through time's strife and agitations. 

Though bound with adamantine chain, 

Though crucified and often slain, 
All things oft sing with wider echoing tones 
For thy millennial earth, millennial sons and thrones. 

To men or office dare we longer grope? 
Since at the height of civilization 
The history of her leading men has been 
A curse and loudest blasphemies against the hope 
The azure skies upon our spirits ope. 

Our politics are but a crime, 

A pestilential bed of slime. 
Sowing on life abortive births of sin. 

Can honest men? Can men of God? 

Can men of conscience, truth or laud 
With any wing hold office, place or power 
When justice is dethroned and bribery rules the hour? 

17 



All things now call and call alone for thee. 
Time like an aged sire, wrinkled and white. 
But with his rich experiences doth slight 
And scorn all panaceas that would free 
The social heart from its long leprosy. 

He has seen every generation 

With some sure cure its courses run 
Then leave the world with still more deadly blight. 

No age has diagnosis sure 

And if it had, Oh could it cure? 
No mortal power regenerates the heart 
And all things without this but more disease impart. 

The very time's developments of power, 
Knowledge and conquest over nature debate 
The enfranchisement of man from this weight 
Of centenarian ill. Is this endower 
For selfish ends? Does it not invite the hour 

Of disestablishment to throne 

Thee over all supreme alone. 
In honor, majesty and sovereign state? 

The gifts and powers of heaven above 

Are only safe in hands of love; 
In other hands a curse they must untwine. 
But with thee they are safe and grow still more divine. 

The discords of our unredeemed humanity 
That strike despair upon all mortal ears 
Ascend on high; reaching celestial spheres 
There is a change, and a minor harmony 
Of life's unlanguaged pain is heard by thee. 

Man's passion-blind and erring play 

Are not to thee just what they say. 
When thou translatest earthly hopes and fears 

A prayer is oft in guilty deed. 

We know thine eyes with sorrows bleed. 
And thou can'st hear by sorrow's mystic art 
The world's travailing pain as prayers unto thy heart. 

Around the iron-guarded gate of death 
Soon gather those that crowd the portal birth. 
Torn,^ broken, sick and robbed of strength and mirth. 
They come to yield up sorrow's burdened breath. 
Each generation there this prayer hath solemn saith: 

"Oh not for me! Oh not for me! 

High kingdom of eternity! 
By all I wished but found not here on earth, 

By life and ruin, loss and pain, 

By my immortal nature slain. 
By all thou art and will be in thy day 
For coming generations. Oh haste. Oh haste, I pray!" 

18 



The church which thine own Christ has full redeemed. 

The church which incarnates his personality, ; 
Thoughts, passions, principles, immortality. 
And the ripe fulness which the Father streamed 
Into his empty form, that church has dreamed 

With joy sublime of that far age - 

Which promise, power and grace engage \ 

To build on earth for lost humanity; ; 

That church doth groan. Oh deeply groan! '| 

Oh is it not thy spirit's moan! i 

Can these deep sighs which issue from thy breast i 

Be lost in vanity nor ever find their rest? i 

Thy first descended sons of pure inspire j 
Whom thou hast sent from thy celestial clime 

To hold the faith, and with glad song to chime i 
The golden age feel thy prophetic fire 

Within their hearts. Each gathers the desire : 

So scattered wide in man and thing ; 

And unto thee their sorrows sing. 
Sing on. Oh poet-priests! Oh be not dumb 

Unto this age of strife and gold ! 

Though they hear not nor ye behold. ; 

With triumphant joy and deathless faith sum i 

Up the world's travailing cry: "Come, come. Oh kingdom, come!" | 

"Come, come. Oh long delayed and golden age! ^ 

Age of the world's unlanguaged deep desire, [ 

Her travailing hope and visions that inspire i 

Her high, victorious hours! Age that will gage j 

Itself by the awful curse and darkest page j 

Of earth's yet unregenerate heart! j 

Age of the poet's song! Age that art j 

The embodiment of all the higher ^ 

Visioned dreams which the celestial spheres \ 

Have rained on pain and love and tears! ■] 

Age of divine purpose, fulness and employ, ! 

From heaven, Oh descend and build on time's destroy!" ' ■. 

"Oh age, bend down and lay thy passioned heart j 

Upon the nurseless spirit of the earth! . "; 

Her long and wintry courses since her birth ) 

Have frozen her forbidding the impart \ 

That glorifies with thy celestial art. ] 

Come! Kiss thy infant and caress, ] 

And with thy warmth her spirit bless! j 

Thou crimson life! Thou pure maternal birth! | 

Thou warm divine self-sacrifice! 

Oh bid the earth's dead soul arise! : 

Then through her dense, diseased material frame ] 

Thy all renewing life will burst forth like a flame." j 

19 ] 



"Touch thou the earth's unemancipated king, 
And with the contact of thy immortal heart 
Oh disenthrall his spirit from the mart 
Of selfishness! Oh let his manhood spring 
From time's long travailing agonies, and wing 

Unto the infinite ideal 

Thou dost upon his eyes unseal! 
Dethroned, plundered, profaned, enslaved, a part 

Of groaning nature, unconscious, 

And trampled down by beasts and sense, 
His hour of soul enfranchisement be now. 
And thy investiture upon the morning's brow!" 

"Thou hast the full resources for this life; 
Thou canst destroy the hoary iniquities 
Bequeathed to us by the antiquities 
Of crime. Some few leaders of this strife, 
Some chiefs, some towers of self, thy lightning knife 

Must blast and hurl into the dust 

To stay time's swift, contagious lust. 
O'er the wide host thy soft benignities 

And arching grace from heaven above, 

As o'er the sick a mother's love, 
Can smother down time's heritage of ill 
And nurse out of the earth a race that thou dost fill." 

"Thou canst destroy the infernal dogs of war, 
And the politics of hell by which their 
Course is constant driven. Panic with her bare 
And hunger-bitten hordes will fly before. 
And poverty be exiled from thy shore. 

The brute, the brothel and saloon 

Will break for good their long commune 
And sink with curse to each infernal lair. 

Greed, strife, crime, sorrow and decay, 

Ignorance, diseases and dismay, 
All, all of sin, of selfishness and blight 
Shall fly before thy face as darkness from the light." 

"Come thou on earth with thy exhaustless heart! 
Thou hast celestial and supremest powers. 
Thou hast the azure and immortal dowers 
Of sun-giving heaven. Thou hast and art 
The spirit pure that in each angel flowers 

To splendor, joy and purity. 

The nature of divinity 
Doth dwell in thee and tTiou canst it impart. 

Sow, sow thy potencies of life. 

And from the very heart of strife 
Another world with beauty and delight 
Shall forth from chaos rise toward heaven's golden height." 

20 



"Cornel Bring t"he royal institutes of state! ] 

The h'gh, supreme, majestic, honored laws; i 

And kin to these those reverential awes 1 

Thy youth and age delight to contemplate | 
As we behold the statues of the great. 

Virtue, justice, truth and righteousness j 

Thy nations shall with splendor dress. j 

Faith, love, hope, joy, magnanimousness, applause > 

Shall be the ornaments of gold- ^ 

Each brow and heart shall then unfold. ; 

Come, come, Oh state! What business, rule and home ■ 

Thy bases shall support, enkindle shall thy dome!" 

"As thy institutions are above the past 
Bring thou the man tuat is enthroned on them; 
The man who is his throne and diadem, 

And in whom the Infinite has glassed ■ 

His nature's passions. Oh bring him on the blast \ 

And wreckage of this mortal kind! ; 

Oh immortal heart and mind! ■. 

Spirit divine! The world's pinnacle! The gem j 

Of all creation! Oh mate | 

Of seraphim! Oh incarnate ; 

Son of God! The hosts of eternity i 

Are bending from their thrones to look with joy on thee." i 

"Oh man divine, who would not long for thee! 
Thou crowning all art with devotion crowned; 

And from devotion's heart riches supreme abound , 
As blessings from the azure purity. 

Thy passions with the white intensity ; 

Of love fills every welcome b:'rth l 

Of thy uncrowded crowded earth. ^ 
Oh how the new created heavens resound 

With universal harmony! 

One redeemed humanity! I 

One human brotherhood! One family race! i 

One many passioned heart that one heart does embrace!" j 

"Come, come, Oh long delayed and golden age! i 
Age of all passions, purities and powers! 

Age of all ideals and sublimest hours i 

Of execution! Oh age that will gage i 

The heightless height and boundless reach that cage ] 

Themselves in frail humanity! 1 

Oh age of immortality ^ 

Which the fountains of the infinite assuage! < 

Come! Oh rise on time's foundation stones < 

The splendors of thy everlasting thrones! i 

Come thou upon the morning's golden pinions 1 

And round the feet of God build thou thy last dominions!" j 

21 • i 



THE TWO TRAVErLERS. 

I met two travelers most unlike, 

Young joy and aged sorrow. 
How their extremes us mortals strike, 

Who oft from each must borrow. 

Again T met the two at night, 

The two so distant parted. 
But sorrow was like morning bright 

And joy was broken hearted, 

And then I found that they were not two 

But each part of the other, 
A double soul we mortals view 

As far from one another. 

Life's sorrow is the birth of joy 
And joy the child of sorrow; 

They both each other build and buoy 
And gives what each must borrow. 



THE MOCKING BIRD. 

Mocking Bird, Oh Mocking Bird! 

The mention of thy name 
Deep desire within has stirred 

And from the north I came 
To hear the magic song that gives thy spirit fame. 

I harken now for thee; 

Sing, sing to me a strain! 
Thy music full unfree 

Into my heart and brain! 
I'm kindred unto thee and listening as in pain. 

Hark! Hark! Is that the measure 

Now bursting on my ear? 
Too high for sense of pleasure, . 
Too deep for doubt or fear. 
Quick'ning soul that reaches out with hunger vast to hear. 

22 



Forth leaps the strain of life; j 

Out shoots the stream of fire; I 

It pierces like a knife; ■ 

It quickens like inspire; • i 

Waking-, waking, waking soul with infinite desire. i 

I cannot think or dream, i 

I can only hark and hear, j 

All powers that in me stream ,\ 

Are straining at my ear; j 

To lose a single note is growing pain and fear. ; 

On flows the thrilling sound; ' 

On sweep the flood of song; ,: 
Life riseth with a bound 

Of passion swelling strong, ' 

Enchanted, chained and held though sweeping swift along. ^ 

New fountains in me burst; i 

Life mounteth up the steep; j 

Soul has drunk away her thirst ] 

And can walk and run and leap; i 

Something strange, divine and swift doth through her being 

sweep. ■ 

Oh Music, the divinest 

Of all the muses fine! 
Oh spirit that enshrinest 

The songs for which we pine, ,, 

Ever still the Queen of life, supremest and benign! : 

Out, out thou now art flinging 

The fullness of thy heart, 
To earth and heaven singing 

The lyrics of an art ' 

That feedest full the passion of a life's immortal part! , 

Far, far thou now art throwing 

A thousand notes of fire! ] 

As the soul the song is glowing, j 

Thou art lost in thy inspire, ] 

Crimson life is sweeping through thy heart so like a lyre. ■ 

Forth, forth, thou now art pouring \ 

The spirit-quick'ning strains! ■ 

All drinketh and go soaring j 

Forgetful of their pains, j 

After every vital draug-ht more thirsty still remains. ; 

23 • i 



'Tis a glowing, glowing passion. 
Pure, flaming, swift and bright. 

The music take the fashion 
Of the spirit burning white. 
Every note intense and round and piercing with delight. 

'Tis a wild ecstatic measure, 

A swift delirious strain. 
The youngest, youngest pleasure 

With a drunken heart and brain. 
That never knew a sorrow and never dreamed a pain. 

'Tis a lyric, lyric rapture 

Of a lyric spirit glad, 
With the lyrics that doth capture 
The soul of sorrow sad, ' 
Restoring it the happiness no dreams have ever had. 

Here Nature sits and nurses 

Her children gathered round. 
She feedeth them the verses 

That in her bosom bound. 
And to her youngest singing soul has taught this glorious sound. 

Here beauties, dreams and visions 

Are crowding hill and dale; 
Loud laughing with derisions 

Or intense and still and pale; 
Spirit lifted up on high and swept on like a gale. 

Here song and joy and story 
Are list'ning as in trance; 
There is a flash of glory, 
Of splendor and romance 
Every time the wild caprice sweeps the ecstatic dance. 

Here poets of all orders 

Come running from afar. 
Thy song has crossed the borders 

And swings the gates ajar, 
The past and future singers around thy presence are. 

They forward lean and listen 

All straining and intense. 
Some eyes with sorrows glisten. 

Some swell with power immense, 
Some white and glowing glow and all are free from sense. 

24 



Between the breathing pauses 

Each smothers down his lyre, 
But the pulsing pulsing causes 
A bursting out of fire; 
One by one they sing to thee a snatch of their desire. 

"I have heard the lyric chorus 

Of the early dewy morn 
When before and round and o'er us 

As the sun again was born, 
Every winged singing soul with gladness new was torn. 

As I listened to that singing 

Up I mounted to the height; 
There were dreams before me winging 
That did capture my delight. 
Till forgotten was the song in the images so bright. 

But the song that now is sweeping 
Flings enchantment on the ear, 

With the high crescendoes leaping 
I am climbing up the sphere. 
But abounding with the passion that is binding me to hear. 

As I circle round the pleasures 

Of the forest, sea and sky, 
I will never hear such measures 
As this wild ecstatic cry; 
But the echoes, Oh the echoes, they will never, never die." 

"1 have heard the strings of life 

And the fingers full of fire; 
Though entangled in the strife 

Did answer the inspire 
Leaping with a life divine and panting with desire. 

But this passion more Intense, 

More intense and pure and white, 
Delivers from all sense 
And spirit doth bedight. 
En singing singing robes that bear me with delight 

Where priests and prophets sing 
Their visions, dreams and lays, 

And flaming echoes fling 
Down the enchanted ways 
Where Life and Love and Truth the scepter swings and sways. 

25 



As I go upon my way 

I will listen to the lyre, 
But my hand will often stay 
Its throbbing strings of fire, 
Dreaming of this soul of song that captures my desire." 

"I have felt the hungry tooth 

Of the dragon of remorse 
Bite, bite unbitten youth 

With the fury of its force, 
Driving blinded and insane the mortal on its course. 

The spirit of the morn 

In rainbow beauty dressed 
Was torn as clouds are torn 
Before the storm's unrest, 
Pitching down the ruined night from heaven's highest crest. 

Life now has clean forgot 

The poison of the pain; 
The spirit so besot 

Is rising without stain, 
Binding tight the glorious song upon its heart ar.d brain. 

As I go upon my course 

I will sing as sorrow sings. 
As sorrow is the source 
Of song that sweetest rings 
I will mingle it with this in the fountain head of springs." 

"I have heard the systems swinging. 

Sing the echoes of the spheres. 
I have heard the ages winging, 

Ring the choruses of years. 
And these broken-hearted mortals in the tragedy of tears. 

But the high eonic measures 

Of the universal score 
Are forgotten in the pleasures 

Of the strains that on me pour, 
In the panting panting rapture of this lyric lyric lore. 

Sublime in their sublimity 

They go upon their way. 
Divine in thy divinity 

The raptures of thy lay 
Createth new the worlds of life and sweep them down the day. 

26 



When I sweep along the ages, 

When I soar above the spheres. 
When the battle fiercest rages. 
There will ring within my ears 
This passioned, passioned measure that is laughing at all 

fears." 

"I have heard the poet's lark 

Soar singing to the sun; 
All the world doth pause and hark 

As the stream adown doth run, 
Lost, lost and found in dreams when it is but begun. 

The beauty, bird and strain 

Doth lift Life out of earth. 
It pierces heart and brain 

Till dreams come unto birth. 
Singing, singing, singing songs delirious in mirth. 

Now far across the sea 

I bend a listening ear. 
And now I turn to thee 
Deep thrilling as I hear, 
Yielding here the palm of song, perhaps because so near. 

Those poets and their lark, 

These and their mocking bird. 
To each other bend and hark. 
By each other vast are stirred, 
More impassioned passioned praise was never never heard." 

"Unto the golden spheres 

From whence we came we turn. 

Not one of our compeers 

Thy song would dare unlearn. 
For through the future's lyre thy soul and song shall burn." 

Mocking Bird, Oh Mocking Bird! 

Oh Music wild and free! 
Though images and word 
Are pleasures unto me. 
Vaster, vaster is the joy of listening unto thee. 



27 



A MURMUR. 

Spirit rich, nature divinest 

Of all earth and heaven above, 

Thou for whom forever pinest 

Youth and hope and joy and love. 

Life a murmur from me raises 

With thy high eternal praises. 

Thou hast in my being planted 
Love to thee as fierce as fire. 

I was strung to be enchanted 

With the soundings of thy lyre. 

Thine own life with mine was mingled 

And my heart from thine was kindled. 

Just a sound, the faintest sounding, 
From old nature, man or art 

And my soul goes bounding bounding 
With a storm in brain and heart; 

Thou a sun-bright angel gleaming 

Leadst the visions of my dreaming. 

Forth from thee a strain of thunder — 
Suns and new created spheres 

Roll around, above and under 
Guided by the mighty peers 

That thy measure ever marches 

Through the morning's golden ai ches. 

Do I hear a bugle calling? 

I am lost to life and time. 
Up the fiercest, front rank hauling 

Man's one banner most sublime, 
Freedom's struggles passes through me 
As thy spirit doth endue me. 

Yet Oh Music, I must tell thee. 
None to me have ever said: 

"Let me play and freely sell thee 

What to thee is more than bread." 

Hungry for thy strains divinest 

Famished, lean and pale I pinest. 

28 



Why was I so high impassioned 

With the measures of thy lyre? 
Why was I so from thee fashioned 

By old strife and labor dire? 
Why was I by thee inventioned, 
So untaught and never mentioned 
To the end so plain intentioned? 



LET THE THINKER THINK. 

The nurse of life is custom bound; 

What has been still must be. 
The infant birth she leads around 

As others think to see. 
But oft the soul within the soul 

Wakes up the slumbering gink 
And trumpets through the spirit roll: 

"Oh let the thinker think!" 

"Thou art within a universe 

Of birth and death and strife. 
The world was made and planned to nurse 

A thinker out of life. 
Thinkers are nature's royal born; 

Thought is man's meat and drink. 
Art thou a man? Stand in the morn 

And let the thinker think!" 

"When plunged like most in loss and tears 

And heart is plowed by pain. 
When will is beaten by the years 

And hope and faith are slain; 
Amid the mangled corpses stand 

Nor from the prospect shrink; 
No time and place were better planned 

To make the thinker think." 

"There is no hope in heaven nor earth 

When heart and mind are dead. 
The thoughtless is a beastly birth 

Without a breast or head. 
But thou wilt rise above thy fears. 

Rise, rise and never sink, 
If thou wilt pause along the years 

And let the thinker think." 

29 



"The infinite, eternal life 

Doth round and round us roll. 
Great fountains still more kind and rife 

\vould burst into the soul. 
The "thinker" and the selfish "me" 

Doth separate or link; 
'Tis life and life and life more free 

To let the thinker think." 

"Oh let the sun this message run 

Above the throne at noon: 
Oh let the night this scripture write 

Above the stars and moon: 
Oh let old Life and Time and Strife 

As crov^d we to the brink 
Write on our ways with lightning blaze: 

'Oh let the thinker think!' " 



THE IDOL BREAKER. 

An ancient king who idols bro"ke 

Stormed o'er the city wall, 
And rushed into the temple door 

To tear them from the hall.- 

His faithful hands had never spared 

An idol to this hour; 
But here was one whose name was great 

With fame and memory's dower. 

The pale-browed priests beneath his feet 
With tears implored to spare; 

To save their idol from his hands 
Their treasures they laid bare. 

He paused a moment, for the wealth 
Would meet his army's greed; 

Within, a battle fierce did rage 
'Twixt truth and sorest need. 

Truth overcame; he raised his sword; 

The idol fell in twain; 
A thousand thousand times their wealth 

The temple fioors did stain. 

30 



So every man whose sduI moves on, 

Meets idols one by one; 
Then meets the idol of himself, 

Debates what shall be done. 

Most pleasing voices fill the ear; 

His heart friends weep in prayer; 
Ambition, hope and youth and love, 

All cry aloud: "Oh spare!" 

Oh smite it! Smite it! Smite it! 

Oh cast it full at length! 
Grasp truth's keen blade! Look up in prayer, 

And smite with thy strength! 

Oh smite it! Smite it! Smite it! 

Nor hesitate nor quake! 
Thy destined hour has come to thee 

To unmake or to make. 

It will cost a pang of anguish. 

The bitterest here below; 
'Twill bring a life of blessedness 

The best that man may know. 

Within the idol of thyself 

Is wealth surpassing gold. 
Which never can be seen or found 

Till thou dost break the mould. 

With this temple idol broken. 

Thy spirit then is free; 
All longed for wealth is round thee spread 

Of mountain, plain and sea. 

Life, love and rest, peace, hope and power. 

Forever more are thine; 
Thou dost inherit wealth untold. 

Infinity divine. 



31 



ALL WE LEARN. 

This selfish life is full of strife 

And blinded greeds are we. 
All daily burn but all we learn 

Is "I" and "mine" and "me." 

Through tears and sighs we grow more wise 

And far beyond earth see. 
The splendor beams that clothe our dreams 

Is "thou"' and "thine and "thee." 

Oh Spirit of all love and light 

Unseal your godlike powers! 
Teach to the heart high heaven's art 

Of "them" and "theirs" and "ours!" 

But oh how swift the years unturn! 

And oh how swift we die! 
All life we burn but only learn 

This "I" and "me" and "my." 



THE MUSES. 

Romance stands in the morning 

And welcomes us to life. 
Comedy with bright adorning 

Conceals the forenoon strife. 
Great epics and her heroes 

The height of day delight. 
Then tragedy's great Neroes 

Of fear oppress us. Night. 



LARGE AND SMALL. 

"When young and swept along 

We front the ancient curse. 
The struggles with the strong 

Our spirit measures nurse. 
Life sings to us a song 

And in us doth unpurse 
A sense that swells the soul as large 

As is the universe. 



32 



The world and life and time 

Doth shear young Samson's head; 
We wake up in our prime 

To find our prime has fled. 
Death sings to us a rhyme 

Of the oblivious dead 
Till soul shrinks to the measures small 

Of our last narrow bed. 



-MAN. 

The sons of morning prime 

Mount up the golden thrones 
Clad in the robes sublime 

That Life unto them loans. 
Then, then a sudden fall 

And Death all bonds doth sever; 
And in the midnight pall, 

Lost, lost. Oh lost, forever. 



THE CENTER OF GRAVITY. 

When we are young and fed from nature's fountains. 
Life's foaming streams burst into us so strong. 
We feel the swift momentum of the mountains 
And gathering tides of seaward sweeping song. 
On, on we drive; no floods can leap along 
Like youth's desire and ardors swift and bright. 
The rush and surge and madness of life's throng 
We leave behind, and bounding passions white 
Outstrip the world's contagious fear and wrong. 
We're sandled, loined and breasted with delight; 
Crowned, crowned with crimson life and fed with purple might. 

The sense and strength of new born consciousness, 
A pressure seems that now and then doth burst. 
The powers of life that being strain and stress 
Are not enough to feed the burning thirst. 
We outgrow earth and rising unimmersed 
By the dread strife and selflsh murdering stains 
The highlands climb with hope divinest pursed 
And hear and sing great paeon flinging strains. 
We crown the world; we king it though it nursed. 
Colossal pride looks down upon the plains; 
Ambition with delight views empire's vast domains. 

33 



Right down our feet, straight up through heart and 
The axis go that swing the mighty world. brain 

Cities and states, man, beast and all life's train 
Around this self are daily circling whirled. 
We stand up straight, with sword and flag unfurled, 
The elements are fronted with defy. 
Upon all things are final judgements hurled, 
And round this self ages and empires fly. 
The universal center, all is swirled 
Of life and time, of earth and sea and sky 
Around the orbits cast by youth's gigantic "I." 

Youth is Life's transcendental egotist. 
There is an infinite, unquestioned weight 
Of emphasis on "me." An optimist 
Of "My and Mine," he fronts resistless fate 
And scorns her powers so calm and strong and great. 
Godlike and tall, balanced and plumbed and strong. 
He stands in life the center of all state 
And all her powers and persons round him throng - 
With homage, praise and honors that elate. 
He rules the world. To him the thrones belong. 
He crowns himself a king and listens to the song. 

But as we age and philosophic years 
Doth climb and measure this vast universe, 
All blinded pride dethrone they off the spheres, 
And nature's truths unto us stern disburse. 
What are we then? TTie large immortals that unpurse 
Significance to these transcendent spheres? 
The mighty souls that ride upon the curse 
And sun-clad rise out of this vale of fears? 
Are we the kings of glorious deeds and verse 
To match and mate the geniuses and peers 
That crown high heaven's height and ride the eternal years? 

We are the last of biologic forms; 
Kindred to beasts; with reason lightly graced; 
As valueless as the ephemeral swarms 
That fog and fen a moment's course has traced. 
Great nature has so little on us placed. 
That prophets high, man, beast and bird and worms 
Into the deep are driven, hurled or paced 
Without a thought to reason, truth or terms. 
One ruthless law all being has embraced. 
Thought stands aghast. Destruction loud affirms 
In neither man or beast are worth preserving germs. 

34 



The universe doth round us ever roll; 
Unto the astronomic globes and years 
We are the same as to some sun like soul 
The insectivorous breed that disappears. 
Time's brief ephemeramorphs — the spacial mere's 
Prolific animalculae — the low 
Protozoa — the smallest psychic spheres, 
And infusoria no microscopes can know — 
Are we not such to the eternal peers 
That center must this vast processional show, 
And watch the constellations rise, splendor, fade and go? 

Are not the wide, impassioned, high and deep 
Oft lifted up by life's dynamic soul 
That fills the universe? When in the sweep 
Of those vast cosmic energies that pole 
This mortal with the spirit of the whole. 
What then is man? How frail and swift and brief? 
How mentionless upon the solar scroll? 
Merely a speck, a flash, a sound, a leaf 
Among the spheres and aeons long that roll; 
A puff of wind, a breath of guilt and grief, 
A bubble that doth burst, and gone, gone beyond belief. 

The mighty worlds swing on their evolutions, 
And like great emery wheels of swiftest flight. 
Their elements in endless revolutions 
Throw off as brilliant, bickering sparks of light. 
Off, off, they go with passions heated white. 
But swifter far than thought can ever think. 
Far deeper than the deepest darkest night. 
As silent as the gulfs beneath the brink, 
And lost. Oh, lost as death blots out of sight, 
Life's flaming sparks of pleasure, strife and swink 
Down, down the darkened void, glow, flicker, die and sink. 

THE GOLDEN AGE. 

Oh golden age! Oh golden age! Oh dream 
Of poets, priests, great, gifted free and wise! 
Vision divine, that doth forever gleam 
Upon the grief, loss, bitterness and sighs 
Of all pure spirits! Oh hope that doth arise 
Out of man's deepest deep unto the height 
Of that desire that in his anguish cries! 
Great moral recreation from the blight- 
ing strife and curse that on this mortal lies, 
Man's spirit and his bleeding, blinded sight. 
Both past and future scan to catch thy glorious light. 

35 



Thou art the state for which humanity 
From her far birth has ever sighed and moaned. 
Blind, lost and torn in courses of profanity 
That mighty soul has in her anguish groaned 
Or battled with the curse upon her throned. 
Her disappointments, struggles and despair 
Have lent the dreams, the best that Life has loaned 
And led her up great vision's golden stair. 
Upon her grief some respite thou has toned 
In songs and dreams thy prophets ever bear 
For every travailing soul and every weight of care. 

Oh distant age of promised recreation 
"When earth and all are pure regenerated, 
And high ideals of heaven's inspiration 
In man and social forms are incarnated! 
When life and law, love, sense and soul are mated, 
When this old globe swings with a glorious verse. 
When man by God is born and dominated. 
When all Life's powers a higher genius nurse 
And all her souls are thrice rejuvenated, 
Who has not longed, would not the course coerse. 
When Man and Life and Love shall climb the universe? 

Thou art the dream all call the most divine, 
That finds and feels man's never-fed desire. 
This travailing soul that doth forever pine 
Beholdeth thee and her rebellious ire 
Is sudden calmed by thy serenest fire. 
Thou dost breathe an infinite eternal hope 
Into her heart. The dreams that thou dost sire, 
Renew her strength and bear her up the slope 
That beckons her with most divine inspire, 
Down to earth's base, up to high heaven's cope. 
Mankind doth stately march with glorious trains of trope. 

But Oh, the question rises up so oft! 
Shall this ideal, man, state and law sublime. 
Rise from the earth that has the ideal scoffed? 
Shall Wisdom's wisest visions ever chime 
Her glorious dreams out of this base of crime? 
Shall these vast hopes e'er find an incarnation 
Out of this strife, disease and death and slime 
That makes the world a blind and lost creation? 
Shall this humanity ever, ever climb 
Time's towering steep and mount unto the station 
That guides the onward globes to some high consummation? 

36 



It grieves my heart, it robs my brain of life, 
It bows me down in darkness, pain and tears, 
It pierces soul as by a murderer's knife. 
To turn from dream and barken to the years. 
The soul that soars beyond the noonday spheres 
And dreams and dreams of Life's rejuvenation 
From there is hurled down, down a night of fears 
That gives young Dream the truth of old Duration. 
Tear off the mask from all that false appears! 
Pluck forth the heart that drives this vast creation! 
Forever hold the truth, though truth seems ruination! 

I cannot see the younger dreams of life; 
My eyes have been relighted by their tears. 
Another dream is born out of the strife, 
And sterner powers rule the eternal years. 
I cannot see the golden splendored spheres 
Of hope and dream rise from prolific earth, 
Or new humanity of kingly peers 
Come into view with transcendental worth. 
The kind, the laws, the wisdom, reverence, fears, 
That might perchance father this glorious birth. 
Oil where can these be found from center to the girth? 

I have gone up unto the mountain peaks 
And scanned the far horizon. What is that blaze 
Of splendor that forever to us speaks? 
'Tis but man's wish projected on the ways 
Of time. Age after age it fitful plays 
Before our grief and the multitude deceives. 
Wise science eyes scanning the distant days 
Can see no more in the autumnal sheaves 
Than Spring's quick hand into the furrow lays. 
What will time give? No more than time receives. 
What goeth in comes out. What life is such it leaves. 

I oft have gone down to the Campus square 
And questioned straight old Greed and Time and Life. 
They scarce would pause or give a moment's care 
As to a dream of some old silly wife. 
When I stood firm and buckled up for strife 
They smiled and infinite contempt uncurled 
Upon Me. "A golden age! 'Tis the rif- 
Est dream of madness! Thy state appearled 
In splendor is straw unto the lightning's knife. 
The ages all in strife are born and hurled 
By old dynamics fierce that drive the blinded world." 

37 . 



r have gone down, down, down into . 
Of human hearts. These deeps alone can nurse 
The hope that man shall ever climb the steep 
Of time. Does life a virtuous germ unpurse 
That shall purge out and full destroy the curse 
That makes her lean, foul festering and deplored? 
Does man's unexplored and soundless deep immerse 
Renewing powers and secret virtues hoard 
To burst and bring the ages of his verse? 
Is the golden age within man's bosom stored? 
The ages he has dreamed can out of him be poured. 

Eonic times have swept across the globe. 
Man is two hundred thousand years of age. 
Earth's travailing soul has often rent her robe 
Yet only brought the strifes that round us wage 
And some few dreams that hope and song engage. 
So many years and yet the senses lead. 
Greed fiercer grows and writes Life's blotted page 
So many years and yet this blinded breed 
Scorn Reason's dreams in their insanest rage! 
Behold the world! The evolutions read! 
When will the golden age upon us be unfreed? 

Life is the wisest of the wisest wise. 
She speaks to all with solemnizing awe. 
"What e'er will be within the present lies. 
It is the past that gives the future law. 
No gods intervene. There's only nature's raw 
' Raw dynamics. Her blind immoral forces 
Treat man as if the maggots of a maw. 
She swings along circle and spiral courses. 
Mounts up and then — plumb down the gulf doth draw. 
All circle round and sometimes to their sources. 
And so it seems the worlds, and faith from hope divorces." 

And can we see new man and institutions 
In this great hope so hailed as scientific? 
Great Science lacks redemption and solutions 
For time's disease, and prophesies terrific 
Social struggles throughout the earth prolific. 
Regenerate with reason, love and life 
This lost humanity and visions beatific 
Could scarcely dream how Man would shove old strife 
Out of the world. The golden ages civic 
Would follow him with glories rich and rife; 
But Dream, Oh Dream divine. Life hacks thee with her knife! 

38 



I can see naught but the old, old evolutions, ; 

The endless change, the ceaseless transformations, • 

Constructions and eternal dissolutions, • 
Successions and continuous incarnations. 

In these kaleidoscopic transmutations I 

1 cannot see an elemental power ; 

That recreates the human inclinations, : 

And throne them on the passions that devour. ; 

I cannot see the glorious consummations i 
When humanity shall blossom like a fiov^er 

And make the social state the dreams divine endow^er. i 

Essentials live. Man is the soul of sense. 
Humanity is but a God-forsaken strife 

Of selfishness v^ith passions most intense, ; 

AH loaded up vv^ith blind dynamic life. l 

With infinite eternal struggles rife, i 

Old earth plows on through darkness, blood and tears, . 

And man in man still plunges deep the knife. i 

Though Science wise doth recreate the spheres, \ 
Can Nature old, a brothel breeding wife, 

Bring forth the race of heaven's kingly peers i 

To mount the throne of life and guide the golden years? i 

i 
I 



BLINDNESS. 

When we are young with fountains full 

Of passions white that glow, 
Hope draws us on and up doth pull 

With Dream's great picturs show. 
We are so swift and straight and free, 

Draw such immortal breath. 
So blinded that we cannont see 

The world devouring Death. 

When we are old and hopes depart. 

Time's struggles on us crowd. 
The heavy weight that years doth bart 

Have broken, torn and bowed. 
Night Cometh fast, we onward flee 

Driven by greed and strife; 
So by it blind we cannot see 

The sunlike soul of Life. 

39 



THE MACHINIST'S SONG. 

Life was once a beast of burden. 

Who her freed and made immortal? 
A machinist did ungirden. 

Bade her front the morning portal. 
He invented iron horses, 

Brazen hands and arms of steel; 
Engines, dynamos and forces 
Harnessed at her chariot wheel. 
Then march, macliinists march! 
There are golden days before; 
Though the poets paint life's arch, 

'Tis the iron base of yore. 
Time and life are onward speeding. 
Great machinists ever leading. 

Steaming o'er the stormy ocean, 

Climbing up the rocky mountains. 
Sailing past the clouds in motion, 

Diving deep to nature's fountains, 
Life in our machines is living. 

Magic powers are in her hand. 
We have given, still are giving 

Over nature wise command. 

Then march, machinists march! etc*. 

I delight to answer Science 

Calling larger work and better. 
With the future strike alliance, 

Her mechanic age doth fetter. 
I'm in my delight and glory 

Working out a fine machine. 
Romances of mechanic story 

Feed me life and keep me green 

Then march, machinists march! etc. 

Earth and these vast systems solar 

Are the frames for nature's flying. 
Machinists are the spirits polar 

Whose assistance she is crying. 
Golden scientific ages 

Fill the great inventor's brain. 
Epics with machanic pages 

Life is bringing in her train. 

Then march, machinists march! etc. 



40 



Nurse, Oh nurse the new creations! 
Harness up great nature's forces! 
Let old Life and Time and Nations 

Royal ride along their courses! 
We can yoke with power organics 

What invention dares to wed. 
Was there ever such mechanics 
As a fine machinist's head? 

Then march, machinists march! 
There are golden days before; 
Though the poets paint life's arch, 

'Tis the iron base of yore. 
Life and time are onward speeding 
Great machinists ever leading. 

THE SONG OF THE SUPFRAGETTE. 

Loud, loud from the splendors of vision 

A silver and trumpet-like throat 
Sings through great applause and derision: 

"Give, give to the woman a vote. 
The equal, the giver, partaker. 

With man of the day and the state. 
She serves and should rise and be maker 
Of law and the courses of fate. 

The law we will make and pay taxes; 
The same right for woman as man; 
Our rights, give our rights, or on-waxes 
The war that Great Right has begun." 

"Man battled and battled ere taxes 

He would pay unless he made laws. 
The very same battle he waxes 

'Gainst woman whose taxes he draws. 
Each payer of tax should be maker 

Of law and the courses of state. 
We'll fight the old battle and shake her, 

Shake, shake the old earth to think straight. 
The law we will make and pay taxes, etc.'* 

"All uplift of nature's impulsion 

Has struggled with laughter and scorn. 
To be laughed at and laugh with convulsion 

World ruling ideas are born. 
From the deep of old nature's ripe passion 

Our cause springs immortal and prime; 
Hail, hail to the world and its fashion, 

The swords and sarcasms of time! 

The law we will make and pay taxes, etc." 

41 



"Great science and virtue and splendor 

Call loud on the human to rise. 
In rising the stronger must tender 

What selfishness holds as a prize. 
Injustice all power must surrender; 

Dishonor from strength must unrobe; 
Rise woman, as woman's defender. 

And rock the strong man and his globe! 
xne law we will make and pay taxes. 
The same right for woman as man! 
Our rights, give our rights or on-waxes 
The war that Great Right has began!" 

A BOSTON CITY SONG. 

Oh hail to the great! Oh hail to the great! 

What's the greatest gift in earth? 
The spirit of life in city or state 
That brings the immortal birth. 
Thou hast power divine and hast ever bred 

Heroes, deeds and dreams of men. 
All honor to thee who hast brought and fed 
The race of the poet's pen! 

Oh Boston, the mother of men! 

The old heroic breed. 
Sword, scepter or miter or pen, 

Aught, aught that the world can need. 
Thou bringest, great mother of men. 

Were thy pilgrim sires not the bravest race 

And of modern days the best? 
The untravelled seas and new world's face 

Their strength with new armor dressed. 
Their life to the wild, like the sower's seeds. 

The wild that was fog and fen. 
Was most freely cast and immortal breeds 

Have come from both but and ben. 
Oh Boston, the mother of men! etc. 

When the tyrants rose and their iron feet 

Would plant upon man's breast 
Then thy men of peace with a welding heat 

To the very soul undressed. 
Sky, forest and sea rocked the new born earth. 

And the beasts roared in their den. 
Thou hast ever brought the heroic birth 

When the times call loud for men. 
Oh Boston, the mother of men! etc. 

. 42 



Thy high born spirits, the very first line 

Of the world forever lead. 
For the cause of man and the powers divine 

Do they love, think, toil and bleed. 
When the last great song of the world doth rise 

O'er city, sea, plain and glen 
There will be some notes in the glorious cries 
Of Boston, the mother of men. 
Oh Boston, the mother of men! 

The old, heroic breed. 
Sword, scepter or miter or pen. 

Aught, aught that the world can need, 
Thou bringest, great mother of men. 



A DENVER CITY SONG. 

Oh deep and dear maternal nurse, 

My heart to thee is singing! 
I often hear a civic verse 

Unto and round thee springing. 
Of all the queens that giveth grace 

Unto the states and nation 
There's only one that I can place 
Upon life's crowning station. 

For thou. Oh Denver, Mother Art! 

We're parts of one another. 
As thou dost fold me in thy heart 

I call thee: "Mother! Mother!" 
And passion, powers and pleasures start 
To thee as to no other. 

Around thee is an atmosphere 

We drink with hungry passion; 
And drinking faith without a fear 

Grow straight in stalwart fashion. 
The virtue of thy free born breast 

Doth feed the strength of mountains. 
Through thee we feel the full unseal 

Of nature's bursting fountains 

For thou. Oh Denver, Mother art. etc. 

When thou wert young upon thee sprung 

Wigwams and shanties slanted. 
Life walked in pride and far descried 

These granite bases planted. 

43 



Now all men know that thou shalt grow 

Unto life's larger story. 
Grow like a Queen in golden sheen 

To virtue, grace and glory. 

For thou, Oh Denver. Mother art. etc. 

Where e'er I roam thou art my home. 

My heart for thee is yearning. 
Each holiday bears me away, 

I'm homeward homeward turning. 
My heart new beats. I tread the streets 

Where born and had my breeding. 
Something doth flow. I feel the glow 
Thy heart to mine is feeding. 

For thou, Oh Denver, Mother art! 

We're parts of one another. 
As thou dost fold me in thy heart 
I call thee: "Mother! Mother!" 
And passions, powers and pleasures start 
To thee as to no other. 



A NEW YORK STATE SONG. 

Dominion and empire doth march to the west. 

Old worlds were decaying, the new unpossessed. 

Life crossed the wide ocean; here paused and looked round, 

With mightiest visions her spirit was bound. 

New York with resources and peoples most rife 

Arose on her sight as a dream upon strife; 

Planned, founded and built, sealed and chosen by fate. 

The dwelling of Life in her highest estate. 

New York is a state of dominion and power. 

Upon her sits empire, a crown of endower. 

A splendor and majesty gowneth her worth, 

The pride of the Union, the reverence of the earth. 

Possessor, redressor, progressor most great. 

New York leads the line in the courses of state. 

Around our wide borders of waters and land. 
On central dominions his:h pillared and spanned. 
On mothers and sires and their progeny trains 
The spirit of state in his:h majesty reigns. 
What valorous front and arboreal height 
And atmospheres fine round the fighters that fight. 
Old nature beholdeth with gladness most rife 
And feedeth New York with the passions of life. 

New York is a state of dominion and power, etc. 

44 



From chaos a coBmos has risen divine; 
The highlands of life with thy cities bright shine. 
Intelligence, virtue, law, freedom and right 
Coramandeth thy people and gird them with might. 
Thy multitudes go in processional march 
Through pillars of gold and fhe future's bright arch; 
When splendor attired for a holiday time 
Earth rocks with thy marches and singing sublime. 
New York is the state of dominion and power; 

Up, up the great Hudson, around the great lakes, 
Around the south border a mighty song breaks; 
New Yorkers arise; their allegiance they sing 
And round her defenses immortal they fling. 
The spirit of Life in her highest estate 
Stands up to her height with her passions elate; 
Around her the mothers, sons, daughters and sires 
Are giving and taking the life that inspires. 

New York is a state of dominion and power, etc. 

Another great singing. Oh hearken and hear! 
Thy sisters in song are now shaking the sphere. 
"New York, Oh New York! Thou wert chosen by fate 
And sealed for all time as the leader of state. 
In council or action far, far to the fore, 
On the fiercest front line in the battles of war. 
Thy sisters. Oh guide! We are shaping from thee 
The^,e commonwealths great as the dreams of the free.' 
New York is the state of dominon and power; 
Upon her sits empire, a crown of endower. 
A splendor and majesty gowneth her worth. 
The pride of the Union, the reverence of earth. 
Possessor, redressor, progressor most great. 
New York leads the line in the courses of state. 



A MASSACHUSETTS STATE SONG. 

Massachusetts! Massachusetts! 

In this new world of the free. 
Thou the first born child of promise, 

Joy and hope of Liberty. 
All her life in thee is flowing 

Like the fountains of the sea. 
Tall, erect and virtue throwing, 

Who can match and march with Thee? 
Massachusetts! Massachusetts! 
Sing her praises like the sea! 

; 45 



Never was a state or nation 

Like the state that mothered me! 

Massachusetts! Massachusetts! 
We will live and die for thee. 

Where Life's hopes rush to the battle, 

Massachusetts rushes there. 
Is it death to beard the tyrants? 

Thou didst beard them in their lair. 
Ever burning, ever flaming 

Is the passion rich and rare. 
Lambs when peace and virtue reigneth. 

Lions when dishonors dare. 

Massachusetts! Massachusetts! etc. 

Liberty, the life of nations. 

Mothers up a noble state. 
Where among the sceptered stations 

Is a kingdom that can mate? 
Prophets, thinkers, poets, soldiers; 

Masses lighted, strong and straight, 
Is not Massachusetts towering 

Like the high immortals great? 

Massachusetts! Massachusetts! etc. 

Glorious in thy glorious passion 

Thou hast freed the hemisphere; 
Every state of this great nation 

Feels and claims the kinship dear. 
Free for self and free for others. 

Growing nobler year by year; 
Massachusetts onward marcheth 

Like a standard bearing peer. 

Massachusetts! Massachusetts! etc. 

Massachusetts! Massachusetts! 

Hear that singing like the sea! 
All thy sisters loud are chanting 

Hymns to Life and Liberty. 
Thy great name is in the chorus; 

Hark! It echoes unto thee! 
"Massachusetts still is with us. 
We shall be forever free!" 

Massachusetts! Massachusetts! 
Sing her praises like the sea! 
Never was a state or nation 

Like the state that mothered me! 
Massachusetts! Massachusetts! 
We will live and die for thee. 

46 



A MINNESOTA STATE SONG. 

Minnesota of the North 
Like old Nature standeth forth 
Safe and able for the furies of the storm. 
There is strength and virtue blest, 
Vast resources, poise and rest, 
And volcanic force beneath her bosom warm. 
Like the nation's strong defence. 
With her knotted passions tense. 
She is standing like an elemental form. 
Minnesota! Minnesota! 

Minnesota marches forth 
With the summer smile of nature 
And the virtues of the North. 

Thou art rich in lakes and plains, 
Forests, rivers, mines and grains, 
And all elements by which the nations live. 
Daughters, mothers, sons and sires 
Have the forces and the fires 
That is death to hold and life to freely give. 
Man and Nature rich and rife 
Write a prophecy of life 
.Like an oracle of high superlative. 

Minnesota! Minnesota! etc. 

In the revolution days 

On the nation's records blaze: 
"Minnesota sent a quarter of her men." 

When our Uncle Samuel needs 

Strength and old heroic breeds 
They are present here and will be there again. 

He alone of all the earth 

Binds allegiance to his worth 
He is looking here and holds us in his ken. 
Minnesota! Minnesota! etc. 

Let us face the golden morn 

Where our state ideal was born 
When old Life out-struck her best and boldest plan. 

Let us dream the fathers' dreams. 

Make the state and all her schemes 
Tlie creator of a higher type of man. 

And in building the ideal 

Every man will set his seal 
On a commonwealth the others eager scan. 
Minnesota! Minnesota! etc. 

47 



Minnesota guards the North 
'Gainst the polar biizzara swarth, 
A magnificence of massiveness and might. 
Minnesota marches forth 
With the bearing of the North 
Through the portais where the future doth invite. 
She is tall and straight and strong 
Like a brother sisters throng, 
An immortal that the nation doth delight. 
Minnesota! Minnesota I 

Minnesota marches forth 
With the summer smile of nature 
And the virtues of the North. 



AN ILLINOIS STATE SONG. 

When great Nature made the earth 

Illinois was then designed. 
She would bring a state to birth 
With few equals of her kind. 
Prairie lands of richest wealth, 

More for man than for the mart; 
Life and passions full of health 

Pumped she from her crimson heart. 
Illinois! Great Illinois! 
Splendor, passion, power and poise; 
Center of a quarter sphere, 
Tall, erect and void of fear; 
Vast resources, fire and force 
For a high, ascensive course. 
Greatness, honor, blessing, joys; 
Illinois! Great Illinois! 

Village, orchard, farm and home. 

Forest, river, field and lake. 
Nature's sons that never roam 

More than loyal measures make. 
Allegiance, honor, praise and pride 

O'er our Illinois doth sweep. 
And we Illinoians ride 

Singing with the passion deep: 
Illinois! Great Illinois! etc. 

Great Chicago's work and wealth, 

Springfield's prestige, pride and power. 

Stop ambition, strife and pelf 
In the song's contagious hour. 

48 



Swept as rising feeling sweeps, 
Filled as feeling fills the strong. 

All the state doth sudden leap 
In the fervors of the song. 
Illinois! Great Illinois! etc. 

*Tis a great and glorious state; 
All our songs together run; 
Nature, Man and Life elate 

Melt and mould us into one. 
Like a paean of the morn, 

Like the trumpets of the sea, 
Like a thunder sudden born 
Set the lUinoians free: 

Illionis! Great Illinois! 
Splendor, passion, power and poise; 
Center of a quarter sphere. 
Tall, erect and void of fear; 
Vast resources, fire and force 
For a high, ascensive course. 
Greatness, honor, blessing, joys; 
Illinois! Great Illinois! 



SCIENCE. 

Spirit of Science! Wise altitudinal soul! 
Great nature's life in latest incarnation! 
Gut of the deep where strifes eternal roll 
Thou hast ascended time's supremest station 
To rule the globe and guide its congregation. 
Of all the spirits earth did ever pole. 
Of all the powers that ruled with domination. 
Of all the lives that virtue forth did roll, 
Of all the seers that saw the far creation 
And drew the veil and did reveal the goal, 
Thou art the last and best, a rich transcendent soul. 

All, all the past were long convulsive pains 
And travailing throes to set the spirit free. 
The blind old evolution's blinded trains 
All culminate and find their end in thee, 
For to them all thou art a throned divinity 
Of intelligence. Thou art a piercing power 
Sheer to the heart of this infinity. 
Thou knowest not the person, place or hour 
In thy eternal passion to unfree 
The living fact. Life thou dost double dower 
With reason, truth and hope and build her like a tower. 

49 



Thou art a majesty and countenance of light. 
The wisest soul of this vast universe 
Looks through thine eyes into this mortal night. 
The infinite intelligence doth unpurse 
In thee its fulness. Thy atmosphere doth nurse 
The sense of life, conception and creation. 
When face to face thy being doth immerse 
In mighty dreams of quick'ning inspiration 
That spirit lifts above the ancient curse. 
Nature's bondage, contempt and degradation 
Is flung from off the soul rising to domination. 

Thy mighty mind doth pierce all time and space, 
And as the lightning through the clouds of night. 
Thy solar thoughts these lightning far out-race 
And gainst the long resistances of might 
Dofh penetrate and clothe them with thy light. 
A thousand vforlds that once lay dark concealed 
Around us shine with splendors glowing white. 
Power and resource that nature would not yield - 
Thou hast laid bare, a wonder to all sight. 
In man himself thou hast a man revealed. 
And to all coming times another trumpet pealed. 

Thou liftest up the powers of old tradition 
And o'er the anvil doth fling them to the earth. 
Thou destroyest all ignorant superstition 
That maketh mind a midnight blasted dearth. 
Thou bringest forth unto a glorious birth 
A progeny to guide the recreations 
Of all man's worlds fronl center to their girth. 
Even the gods that crown high heaven's stations 
Thou testest for reality and worth. 
Only the truth of thy calm demonstrations 
Can claim the heart and mind and rule the generations. 

All, all that shrink or hesitate or hate 
The searching of thy fierce interrogations 
Are false in heart and must decay in state 
Though they now hold the ancient dominations. 
Wise spirit of resistless penetrations. 
That seeketh facts, the base reality. 
The living "is", its nature and relations 
Stripped of the self's conceptions and partiality, 
Why should ought living shrink? All real creations 
Are stamped with nature's own finality. 
And Thou aft double stamped to test the world's reality. 

50 



Thou hast anew made this chaotic earth, 
She is transformed into a kingly sphere. 
Unto Old Time she is a magic birth 
Such majesty and splendors bright appear. 
Before mankind is spread a new career 
That strong impels unto a spirit's course. 
New life and light, new powers and visions clear 
Fly from thy soul with elemental 'force. 
In thee are hopes the world may well revere 
As sprung direct from the eternal source 
And should not Life love Truth and who would them divorce? 

From hence the great subjective worlds of mind, 
Man's images of this vast universe. 
Shall more and more become a counter-kind 
As thou to man the cosmos shall unpurse. 
The image and reality shall nurse 
Each other, and in each other find 
Deliverance from the ignorance and curse 
That both divide and make both lost and blind. 
Nature and man beneath thy hand and verse 
Shall then become a single cast and kind 
A.ud all her mighty powers through him be re-combined. 

Even now thou dost endower beyond all dream. 
Thou givest as the sun doth give his light. 
Unto thine own both lore and power supreme 
Thou feedest till the mortal is bedight. 
As poets clothe the gods on heaven's height. 
Courage, enterprise, conquest and creation 
And mighty works to front the morning bright 
And mightier dreams are in thy inspiration. 
New worlds and men thou makest in our sight. 
Lfife almost reels with this intoxication 
But thy hand on her head gives wisdom domination. 

The future doth belong to thee. All empire 
And dominion are coming to thy feet. 
The highest powers the parent-past can sire 
Are disendowered and from thee far retreat. 
All civics, laws and literature doth greet 
Thy dynasty. The brave old sword now lies 
Upon the wall. The prophet's lyre doth meet 
Thee with a glorious song. The hammer flies 
With strength and stroke that from thy passions beat. 
Life from her base unto the azure skies 
Thy spirit penetrates and lifteth with surprise. 

51 



If but another such as thou couldst rise. 
As good in heart as thou art great in mind, 
And for the ends for which the world-soul sighs 
Their beings join as marriage spirits bind. 
If such a glorious union could but find 
An entrance to the heart of this profanity. 
Oh what a change? Oh what a god-like kind 
Would spring out of this greed and sense insanity? 
Could ye the dreams, the dreams our youth enshrined, 
Enter and fill Life's aching aching vanity, 
No poet dreams could paint the future of humanity. 

Spirit of Life that fills the universe! 
Great Being of these infinite incarnations! 
If Science thus thou didst so free unpurse. 
Couldst thou not send one for our adorations? 
Thou moral Nature from heaven's highest stations 
Come down, come down! With Science be united! 
Enter mankind! Mother the generations! 
Inspire all life! Let man be plumbed and righted! 
And who could dream the glorious consummations?* 
These humans then so burdened, bowed and blighted. 
Would swift arise divine, erect and strong and lighted. 



THE SWEETEST OF THE SWEET. 

A song. My Dear, fell on my heart 

Too pure and rich to die. 
So it to you I now impart, 

To others by and by. 

The snows of three score happy years 

Were lying on his head 
But his high heart and twin soul spheres 

With glowing fire was fed. 
About him round were freely strown 

The blessings of this life, 
Were lands and gold and on a throne 

Above them all a wife, 
A wife that filled his growing heart 

With life's immortal love, 

52 



With love fhat never can depart ; 

But lifteth all above. 
All, ail his heart was given her. j 

Love never can withhold; ■ 

When giving sen he did confer ; 

The trifles of his gold. ■ 

It was his joy to give his gifts, 

And as to us the sun 4 

Sends golden splendors through the rifts, -i 

His blessings down did run. ! 

And once a check to money street 

He wrote out proud and bold: 
Pay to "The Sweetest of the Sweet 

A hundred coins in gold." 
In at the banker's window there ; 

She passed it, and surprise ■': 

Fell on the banker in his care 1 

And wonder on his eyes. | 

"Why, this is strange! Unusual name! i 

'The Sweetest of the Sweet!' \ 

The gentleman has here a claim - i 

But who are you we greet?" ' 

*'0h! I'm the 'Sweetest of the Sweet/ 

And he's the best of men. i 

You need not fear for he will meet 

The order of his pen." ] 

"Well, sign your name here on the back. J 

I never go on trust, '] 

But in this case I'll leave the track ■ 

And trust you, for I must." i 

She took the pen and wrote her name i 

The name of Susan B. , j 

And handed in with happy frame J 

The lines so plain to see. { 

He counted out the proper sum ■ 

And drew the check inside. ; 

He stood a moment as if dumb ; 

And then instinctive cried: ; 

"Oh this won't do! We cannot pay 

A cent to Susan B.. 
We only pay our gold today 

Unto the name we see." . i 

So once again she took the pen \ 

And signed it as was meet \ 

And wrote down there for every ken, \ 

"The Sweetest of the Sweet." > 

So then he counted out the gold '\ 

Without a shade of doubt 

53 ^ 



And with a smile that volumes told 
She slowly passed on out. 

The banker dreamed of his old love 

He lost so long ago, 
Whose angel spirit winged above 

And left him dark below. 
In all his clerks it kindled dreams 

T|ie purest of all life. 
And maiden forms in radiant beams 
'.■- Came as bethrothed and wife. 
They voted all that such a name 

Was never in a bank, 
It should be hung up in a frame 

As of the highest rank. 
So it was framed and on the wall 

It hangs above their heads 
And mid the frenzied finance thrall 

A saving magic spreads. 

And I'm that old man's son, My Dear, 
And you whom now I greet. 

Her one successor and her peer 
"The Sweetest of the Sweet." 



ELECTRIC LIGHTS. 

Light, Oh Light, Oh most divinest 
That has risen from the deep! 

Thou unto these mortals shinest 
Like a god from heaven's steep. 

Life and hope thou dost enkindle 

With a fire that knows no dwindle. 

Nature's lights were round my morning; 

I have stood and calm beheld 
Sun and moon and star adorning 

Till my passions swelled and swelled 
As I watched the solemn splendors 
And their glorious train attenders. 

Now within a city crowded 

Sun, nor moon nor star I see. 
Morn and evening lamps are shrouded 

By these towers and strife in me. 
But another vision shinest 
After which I hungry pinest. 

54 



These electric lights of science 

Fascinate me, feed and fill. 
Light and life strike new alliance 

As a therapeutic skill 
Loss restores and starts a-streaming 
Passion, pleasure, thought and dreaming. 

Through the city when its lighted 

'Tis a joy to roam around. 
Spirit, business-bowed and blighted, 

Visions on it bound and bound! 
Up they come and in the brightness 
Dance and revel with delightness. 

Lights are flaring up to heaven; 

Lights are flaming down the ways; 
Bursting as the sudden levin; 

Shining as the stars that blaze. 
Everywhere the light is streaming 
As if night were lost in dreaming. 

Here a thousand bulbs are blazing, 

I'm enchanted like a child, 
In the windows wonder-gazing, 

On and on and on beguiled. 
Captured, captured by the magic, 
Out of life so sad and tragic. 

There the light is flowing, flowing, 
Like a rainbow colored stream; 

Rainbow figures bright and glowing . 
Dance as in a poet's dream. 

Poetry has sprung from science 

And the harp strike new alliance. 

Now a sign is sudden blazing. 
Should not living spirit heed? 

Out it goes before my gazing; 
In again that I may read; 

All the magic lights of fancy 

Pale before this necromancy. 

Towers and domes and walls and arches 
Are a blaze of blinding light. - 

Life in conquest onward marches. 
As on day so on the night; 

Over darkness all victorious 

Light creating, grand and glorious. 

55 



On I walk mid splendors courtal. 

Kingly walk as with a crown. 
What is yon? It is a portal; 

On it falls the darkness down. 
Now the lights so brilliant glowing 
One by one blank out are going. 

THE UNDECblNING. 

Music, music, soul divinest 
I have ever heard or knowii. 

Seen or felt or dream designest 
On imagination's throne. 

Of all souls thou art the finest 

And my heart thy heart enshinest. 

Beauty is a form the fairest; 

Strangest magics from her fly; 
Oft, Oh oft, her bosom barest 

To my glad ecstatic cry! 
But, Oh Music, spirit rarest, 
Beauty's form and life thou sharest. 

Love is like an angel brightest; 

I have stood and long beheld; 
Could I be with such unitest. 

Dreams have in me welled and welled. 
But, Oh Music, Love the whitest. 
With thy heart is best delightest. 

Power is like a here strongest; 

I have watched his mighty deeds; 
Giant dreams around him throngest, 

Full and glad each being feeds. 
But, Oh Music, Power belongest 
To the heart that nursed and songest. 

Truth is like a god enthronest 
O'er the globe of mine and me. 

Solemn powers his praises moanest 
As the chantings of the sea. 

But, Oh Music, thou still loanest 

All the songs the gods entonest. 

Beauty fades, the splendor diest; 

Truth is slain amid the strife; 
Love grows old, for youth she criest; 

Power casts off its glory life; 
But, Oh Music, spirit highest. 
Thou sustainest and suppliest, 
That for which my spirit sighest. 

56 



THE MAN WITH THE' PUNCH. 

The world is crying loud for men; 

The times do suffer need; 
Life looks abroad with anxious ken 

And calls the ancient breed. 
The earth is fat and full of things; 

Shake, shake the sleeping bunch! 
Spit on and kick him till upsprings 

The man that has the punch. 

The present prophesies an age 

Of might and man and deed; 
Great ,L.ife unto the daily page 

A hero's dreams doth feed. 
The giants are in battle bound. 

The knotted passions crunch. 
The strong old fighter must be found. 

The man that has the punch. 

The preacher, editor and scribe. 

Mechanic, farmer, lord. 
Whoever leads this modern tribe 

Must bear the oldest sword. 
Earth is a chaos rich and rife, 

Nature is on the hunch; 
And he alone can stand the strife. 

The man that has the punch! 

A man can always stand up straight. 

Can face the world and fight. 
On cowards life doth send the weight 

Of avalanchic night. 
Forego the court and choose the camp; 

Feed on the hardest lunch, 
Oh covet nature's finest stamp. 

The man that has the punch. 

Feed heart and brain with dynamite; 

Sard double up your fist; 
Gods, angels, men and devils fight. 

Though scorned and howled and hissed. 
When man to man they dare to fight 

The dust the cowards munch. 
But he is still the lord of life. 

The man that has the punch. 

57 



THE PRICE OF BREAD. 

My meat and drink! How small my need. 
For I was born at life's low base. 
Hard labor's lot in me did breed 
Contempt for tables dainties grace. 
My riper years still more embrace 
The simple meal that always feeds 
The strongest, noblest of the race. 
I want but nature's barest needs; 
Bread, water, rags and roof is all for which life pleads. 

And just for this. Oh what a price 
I pay that mouth be merely fed! 
The angels in yon paradise 
Will never dream man's cost of bread. 
Great thinkers wise whom life hath bled 
Will never bleed enough to think 
What some in other courses led 
Have paid for just their meat and drink. 
As in the round of slaves they sullen, silent sink. 

I've paid my youth, my morning youth. 
High heaven's best unto the years, 
A gift to Life like Love to Truth 
Or morning dawning on dark fears. 
The hope and dream that ever rears 
An ideal world in rainbow light, 
Joy and her songs untouched by tears. 
Drunk as the future doth invite, 
I've paid it, what a price! for just my little bite. 

I've paid ambitions soaring high, 
Desire, the best that life has known. 
To be a prophet of the sky 
With lightning thoughts none dare disown. 
Ideals and dreams and tales that tone 
The man divine but yet unfreed, 
The thinker when romance has flown. 
The high philosophies we need, 
I've paid it in the toil by which this frame I feed. 

I've paid the passion of my powers. 
Nature's dynamic life and fire. 
The earthquake and volcanic hours 
Whose tempests seized me with desire 
And heart and brain-storms did inspire; 
The raptured passions that create 
And dreams and songs and actions sire 
That image life in high estate, 
I've paid it for the bread that doth my hunger sate. 

58 



What matters it? Millions like thee, 
And some more great and greater far, 
Have paid thy price to nothing be, 
And more shall pay than have or are. 
Nature a baboon and a star 
Debateth which is best to breed; 
With grim sardonic smiles that jar 
The mother doth the baboon feed; 
The star goes down the night and nature doth not heed. 



SLEEP AND DREAM. 

Night, silence, and deep slumber 

Upon my being slept 
Vast agus v.'ithout number 

Across my bosom swept. 
But never dream or token 

Upon my senses crept 
Of life that man has broken 

And tears his grief has wept. 

One shook me then with roughness 

i^nd woke me up to life. 
She shoved with brutal gruffness 

Into the deadly strife. 
Such fierce unreasoned madness 

Of elements so rife 
Seems but a dream of sadness 

Death endeth with her knife. 

Soon the eternal darkness 

Shall gird me round and round. 
Night, infinite with silence 

Be on my bosom bound. 
Soon everlasting slumbers 

With peace the most profound 
Unbroken by time's numbers 

Shall rest upon my mound. 

REBELLION. 

'Oh World and Life and Time 
That rule this course and clime! 

Thou sure hast been a blind infernal brute, 
An insane fool and vast gigantic crime 

Unto this mortal shoot. 

59 



Yet unto some I see 

Thou hast been kind to me. 

Compared to some I've had a feather bed, 
And from thy wine, as salt as salt could be, 

My spirit strength has fed. 

But what of this vast mass 
That to oblivion pass? 

A.nd what of those who stand beneath thy curse 
When heaven and hell, nature and man alas! 

Their vials of wrath unpurse? 

Thus oft is stirred the storm 
Of fierce rebellions warm; 

When losing self in those that round me rhyme 
Blaspheming thoughts into my being swarm. 

Oh World and Life and Time! 



THE BATTLE OF BROOKLYN. 

Oh Liberty! Oh Liberty! We turn 
With pleasure and impassioned exaltation 
Unto thee whenever thou dost rise and spurn 
Thy bitterness and bondage-degradation 
To battle for thy right and domination. 
Oh spirit great, most glorious and divine 
Of all the earth, thou art an inspiration 
In thy struggles and mighty passion twine 
Into men like powers of new creation. 
With tension tight the old, old fighter fine 
Comes up and with a rush jumps to the fighting line. 

I love the sounds of battle. I delight 
To see thy presence on the field. I leap 
To life and drink the recreating might 
Of glorious strife. I pant. I snort. I sweep 
Into the conflict and plunge into its deep. 
Is it a choice 'twixt Liberty and war? 
Let it be war, war, war unto the steep 
Of heaven, and war, war, war down to the floor 
Of hell, and all between a mountain heap 
Of dead and oceans vast of living gore; 
'Tis Liberty or death for ever, ever more! 

And thou, my Country! Liberty's best home! 
Great Republic upon the rights of man! 
If thus the passions rise and swell and foam 
At all old tales of Freedom and her clan, 

60 



Should not I rise and in the distance scan 
Thy battles with Europe's old oppression 
That did abhor the New World's higher plan? 
The fathers called for justice and redression; 
Great Life was glad and did the passions fan; 
Together they discussed the great transgression; 
Sudden, erect and proud, they rose with new possess:' on. 

These colonists along the fierce Atlantic 
Turned from the war with Nature, rough and wild, 
To face another. The tempest storms gigantic 
Swept o'er the land and darkness round them piled. 
They saw, a moment shrank, then, reconciled 
The settler donned the soldier's uniform, 
Which was old Freedom's glowing soul that smiled, 
And calm defied the mighty fears that swarm. 
The frontier men came forth; the towns outfiled 
In strength; and thirteen states against the storm 
Guarded each fort and hill amid the lightnings warm. 

Scorning her raw, raw colonists so raw, 
At Bunker Hill the great delusion broke. 
And England with a sudden, fearful awe 
Staggered and fell 'mid thunder, fire and smoke. 
This sphere to new life-consciousness awoke 
And with a strength that prophesied the years 
Back on them flung the tyrant's cursed yoke 
And drove them blind with madness, shame and fears. 
As they reviewed a curse they did invoke, 
And measuring more the manhood of these spheres 
Gathered a larger force and planned to fight their peers. 

New York was then, as now and long must be 
The center of all hope and firm resistance. 
Within her streams far Washington did see 
The coming foe and Brooklyn sent assistance. 
Soon, soon they came. Far in the distance 
A mighty fleet came on to awe the shores, 
To find a base and threaten the existence 
Of young life. The fortress from her scanty stores 
The center and the shore guards with insistence, 
But leaves far east a path with open doors; 
So scanty were her men and large her spreading floors. 

Putnam the fort and wooded southern height 
For action dressed and half to each he broke. 
Each half again was stationed left and right 
To shore and center path to meet the stroke 
That Tyranny on Liberty did invoke: 
Ten thousand twice Howe landed on the shores 
Against our ten fierce rebels to his yoke. 

1 61 ' 



The Hessians kept the center-south and stores; 
Grant led the west with Highlanders of oak; 
Clinton, Percy and Cornwallis far explores; 
Hears of Jamaica's path and its unguarded doors. 

The plans were sealed. On a deceptive night 
Lean strategy struck for Jamaica's road 
In unseen, silent, secret, subtle flight 
The lengthy mass softly and slowly strode, 
Dragging the forty cannons of their load. 
When morning broke the veterans gathered rank 
And officers and men with spirit glowed. 
On an unconscious foe they had the flank 
And vict'ry thus almost in full bestowed. 
With confidence the victory they drank 
And moved upon the lines along the wooded bank. 

Twice, twice the force moved up to the attack, 
Spreading the net along the west and east 
Round Sullivan who kept the Bedford track 
And now too late awakes. The victors feast 
To see success so brilliantly increased. 
They draw the net. They still reserve their fires. 
Now is the time. Upon them they released 
The heavy charge advantage always sires. 
The Hessians strong, a shamble boughten beast. 
Signed from the north charged with the fierce desires 
That certain victory and long delay inspires. 

Disordered quick, their hopes sunk to despair. 
Some fierce discharged their fire. The deadly walls 
Close round them without mercy. Death was there 
And many in the hopeless struggle falls. 
Ere annihilation Sullivan calls 
A swift retreat, but too late to avail. 
Some few broke off into the forest halls; 
The center held still fiercer fires assail; 
Some swear a curse on tyrants and their thralls, 
Then on the lines whose bayonets did them hail 
They rushed the heavy south to die or to prevail. 

The strength that dared this new untraveled world, 
Faced savages and felled the forests old, 
Seized their musket barrels and nature hurled 
Them fiercely on. Down on the Hessians rolled 
A desperate few, despising bayonets cold, 
Down, down they came and many instant fell. 
But some stood up and brute destructions sold 
Around. The elemental passions swell 
And mighty axe-like strokes with swingings bold 
Sunk on that line. The super-human spell 
That falls on Freedom's sons when driven to rebel, 

62 



Rose up in them and drove them on like fire. 
Down sweeping with momentum from the height 
They plunged sheer in, and like Samson blind in ire 
Smote left and right. The passions glowing white 
Instant, desperate and remorselessi smite 
The resistances that clog and close the path. 
But strengthened, numbered and interlocked with might 
The veterans stand. New life is in the bath 
Of blood when hope gulps down the sweet delight 
Of victory. The force that battered nature hath 
Rose up within the foe and wrath encountered wrath. 

Still fighting on they pushed that center back 
And taught again these colon -sts could fight. 
Now they themselves returned upon their track, 
Then forward plunged and swayed both left and right. 
As like a swollen river at its height, 
A gathering wave strikes plumb the curbing tall, 
When suddenly with passions foaming white 
The piled up stream sweeps down and does appal; 
So then that revolutionary might 

Broke through the strength that did around them wall; 
A remnant mere escapes and many prisoners fall. 

Meanwhile brave Sterling kept the path near shore 
And fed his men the wrongs that did them bite. 
'Twas the first time that Liberty e'er bore 
The organized Americans to fight; 
'Twas the first battle for the state, for the right 
Of independence and hopes that on her wait. 
With cruelest kindness, assurance and delight 
She took the chance and scorned the loud debate. 
For such a strength a new world did invite. 
Against the men earth's strongest men can mate 
She set them up in line and on them la-d her fate. 

The sun had started toward the hour of seven 
When the great fleet that lay along the shore 
Let loose her fiercest cannonades of levin 
And on the fields sent forth a thunder roar. 
Why? To hold all minds from that far eastern door. 
Then Grant and his strong highlanders did break 
The tension tight and 'neath strategic lore 
Opened fierce fire. The outposts answer make 
And summons help against advances sore. 
They fought and fought and fell back to the stake 
As greater numbers pressed and their positions shake. 

The posts their last position but gave way 
When Sterling with two thousand untried men 
Supported them and held the foe at bay; 

63 



And more than held, for down on them unpen 
The resistances America till then 
Did never need, and never forth did call; 
But now against the strength of rock and glen 
Came up and stood a bulwarked breasted wall 
Of patriots that dared the fiercest ken 
Of veteran lines, resources, arms and all . 
That raw, raw soldiers green with reason might appal. 

They stood their ground 'gainst more than double force. 
And if some sank beneath the heavy fire 
A charge they sent upon such deadly course 
As Death himself the blast did sight and sire. 
They stopped advance; cooled quick the hot desire. 
Gave passion pause, taught them another lore 
And drank the breath the battle doth inspire. 
The minute-men with musketry of yore 
Mark never missed but sent destructions dire; 
The loss they gave and added to the score 
As confidence and hope did new their bosoms store. 

Once fire baptized upon the battl-e front 
They seemed to rise to higher strength and height 
For every man would bear the burdened brunt 
And on the first and fiercest line would fight. 
Oft, often, did the swift, impetuous might 
Sweep out of rank and in the enemy's face 
Amid the shot on its uncertain flight 
Cast on their flag the crimson of disgrace. 
Those highlanders, great England's war delight, 
Found they were up against the ancient race, 
Against another man old nature's passions lace. 

Now on the west, then on the farthest east, 
And more than once against the center line, 
They would mount up. The veterans more increased 
With numbers and With ordered valor fine 
Would drink the hope of victory like wine. 
But place and race and fire swift answering fire 
Did beat them down, down from that famed incline. 
Again disgrace and valor high aspire. 
Again they dare to mount with dark design, 
And once again a smaller host retire. 
And once again a shout that rises high and higher. 

The sun had climbed to eight, to nine, to ten. 
For four long hours the enemy they stay 
And drove them back, although the veteran men 
At every point did battle to make way. 

64 



Numbers, resource, ambition, desperate play i 

Were stopped and stayed, were bumbled, bent and bowed :' 

My life's green hopes on that uncertain day. 1 

Nor was it strange the victors shout' ng loud 1 

Derision rolled and did the veterans bay. \ 

The strength of war, far famed, boasted and proud j 

Went up against the stop, were stopped and stayed and cowed. i 

But hark, Oh hark! What is that distant sound? ' i 

What strange report upon the patriots' flank? i 

Along the height it sends an awe profound i 

And stills the shouts along the victors' rank. 1, 

All look behind. On them it casts a blank \ 

Astonishment and instant seems to slay i 
The victor hopes that did that summit prank. 

Again there was confusion and dismay . ; 

And their high hopes below the plummet sank, ' 

It was the sound of doom upon the day; ] 

The victors in their rear upon them sudden play. \ 

Cornwallis from his victory did run '\ 

To strike the foes upon the shore and height. i 

On Sterling brave as on brave Sullivan j 

Was strategy and swift, resistless might. ■; 

It were insane to stand up to the fight, j 

And death to yield unto the prisoner's fate? \ 

It were a loss to Liberty, black night 'i 

Unto the cause, on the new state a weight, j 

And deep disgrace on Life's divinest right; ' 

Worst, worst of all, it were a murderous hate j 

On his young soldiers true to pause or hesitate. . 



Then was a brief and burning half an hour; i 

A passion, sacrifice and glory to behold; ■] 

A scene of action, of valor, feat and power I 

That Life and Time and poets rare have told. i 
To save men to annihilation sold 
Sterling commands the mxost part to retreat, 

While he himself and kindred spirits bold. ] 

Cover their course o'er streams with marshy feet. j 

They took their stand 'gainst odds most manifold, < 

A cuosen band in a position meet; ' 

'Twas crimson, crimson life and passion white with heat. i 

Action was quick. The British poured in fire. 

There was a rush, an elemental shock; ; 

Old England and America in ire ; 

Shook to the deep, in deadly conflict lock. = 

The globes of man down to the granite rock - 

Rose up and fought. Shame, anger, fear and might ; 

That chosen few most ruthless did unfrock. ! 

65 1 



Fierce poured the shot; swords struck the living sight; 
But there they stood and did all progress block. 
Many were slain, the living fiercer fight 
As their companions crossed the stream with blood bedight. 

For twenty minutes the fugitives passed o'er; 
For twenty minutes the English on them dash; 
For twenty minutes the handful 'gainst them bore; 
For twenty minutes shot fell and bayonets slash. 
Though shot and hewn with many a fearful gash 
They fought and fought upon the piling dead. 
Into the teeth that did upon them gnash 
These heroes struck with passions fierce and red 
And kept the stream through which their comrades splash. 
Though some sank down into the watery bed 
Most crossed the marshy creek and to the fortress sped. 

Again, again, again, and once again 
They did repulse Cornwallis from the way. 
Though every time a higher toll of men 
Upon the field as dead and dying lay. 
But every time they instant did obey 
And fewer few rushed to defend the place 
And dare the guns the British on them play. 
Time and again they dared the veterans face 
And on their own the slaughter fierce did stay. 
Even the foes admired the hero race 
Of that vicarious fight and sacrificial grace. 

Of that fierce, final, pathway-blocking strife 
Oh give the honors where they most belong! 
Maryland, with a regiment of life 
Round Sterling stood against the victors strong. 
Her fresh, green hopes, a generous youthful throng. 
Stood up with him as seasoned soldiers fight. 
Took the large odds and dared the mighty wi'ong 
Though fiercest fires and bayonets on them light. 
But though from them there rose a glorious song 
Of battle front, of valor, fame and might. 
It could not save the day from dark defeat and blight. 

Defeat! Defeat! Cruel, cruel, Oh cruel defeat! 
The first stand-up for independent state. 
For the great "Declaration" and life replete 
With Liberty, and a decree of fate 
That strength and hope almost annihilate! 
Defeat! Defeat! The first high passions white 
With mighty dreams of glorious estate 
And victories that doth the eye delight, 
Before the strength of tyranny and hate 
Driven and stormed from off the double height 
And victors and their dreams plunged into darkest night! 

66 



Defeat! Defeat! Cruel, cruel, Oh cruel defeat! 
Life's bosom bare, bleeding and pierced and torn. 
And to her dying lips with dregs replete 
A cup that death hath from her presence sworn. 
And falleth back upon her bed of thorn! 
Defeat, defeat, defeat and brutal plunder 
Fed on thy life and tramped ye down in scorn, 
While darkness black and lightning flash and thunder 
Broke on the cause as storms upon the morn! 
Oh Time and Life! How is it ye can sunder 
Virtue from its desert and plunge both down and under? 

Defeat! Defeat! Cruel, cruel, Oh cruel defeat! 
Oh Liberty, there's no defeat like thine! 
There is no cause that makes man more complete, 
Sets us on fire and feeds celestial wine. 
And then to drink the dregs and dross of brine! 
Defeat! Defeat! Thrice happy are the brave 
Death wrappeth in a soldier's glory fine 
And flowers immortal plants upon his grave! 
How infinite the patriot's rest divine 
And memory blest when man is but a slave 
And Libert:) and Life his mortal pathways pave. 

'Tis not in man, in demons or in gods 
To breast the force and win against the fates; 
But when for Liberty they take the odds 
Impassioned song their memory celebrates. 
'Tis not victory alone that satiates 
Life's hungry heart on its immortal quest. 
But virtue high that fierce annihilates 
All tyranny, and in the bosom blest 
Great Liberty eternal consecrates; 
For Life in such is ever self-possessed 
And without such insane however highly dressed. 

And such were ye on that disastrous day! 
The spirit of thy life was high and free, 
A prophecy and splendor on ye lay; 
But all abroad, all down the earth we see 
Life ever slain by Time's tyrannic "Me." 
Veterans, numbers, resources, arms and skill 
Are ruling powers where nature's battles be. 
Though purer fires the nobler spirits fill 
Great nature knows no virtue and no plea. 
The patriot's, prophet's, martyr's blood doth spill; 
The beasts and foes of life possess and crown the hill. 

But there ar© worlds within the worlds of man 
And life is oft the opposite it seems. 

67 



A vict'ry and a victor's larger plan 
Gft with a curse and vast destruct'on teems. 
Out of defeat, out of her torturing dreams 
Another man, another virtue springs , 
Moulding the soul to far diviner schemes. 
The blinded world that blind forever swings 
Is full of contradiction and extremes. 
That which we wish is always that which stings, 
That which we most lament that which the sweetest sings. 

Death and defeat, shame, bitterness and scorn, 
Ye were the seed that mighty Time did fling 
Into the furrow. The harvest to be born 
Was mightier than poets dared to sing 
When dream and song soar on archangel wing; 
For out of ye sprung Liberty immortal, 
A state where man is greater than a king, 
A greatness, magnificence and courtal 
Majesty of life, a glorious ring 
Unto the generations o'er the portal, 
And high, prophetic hopes above the dreams of mortal. 

Ye were the sacrifice by which we live; 
Thy blood was shed man's right to full redeem; 
Thy hate and love unto us thou didst give 
And now it flows in this strange mingled stream. 
The memory and the ancient virtue seems 
At times run out, but there are other times 
A spirit wakes and with sublimest dreams 
High high above the world in passion climbs, 
Full full of rich and ripe prophetic schemes — - 
It is yourselves still mounting to your primes 
Where Liberty and Life eternal music chimes. 

Now Liberty and Life are throned sublime 
In this new sphere and their enchanting song 
Is ringing to the list'ning hosts of time. 
And in the strain are notes so passioned strong 
They fire the, soul and bear it swift along 
Till man is lost an^. |inds himself in line 
When ye around great Liberty did throng 
And poured for her life's consecratest wine. 
Immortal mortals! Godlike and free from wrong! 
Ye are the men Life loves to call "divine." 
Forever more your forms upon her eyes shall shine. 

Ye fought and fell. Now this great nation, 
This dominating power for coming age&, 
This courage, conflict, conquest and creation, 
Though spell-bound as the future high engages, 

68 



Whene'er they pause and read the golden pages 
Of the nation your history so inspires 
Thy glorious strife i within the bosom rages 
And honors that all heaven stili desires 
Are hung on ye unto the endless ages. 
We are the sons of most immortal sires 
And in our bosom yet the fathers' glowing fires. 

Ye Stars and Stripes! Redemption of the night! 
Defense and hope to all the bondaged world! 
Though vastly changed unto the outward sight 
'Twas here your folds were first with joy unfurled. 
Here planted firm; here fiercely on thee hurled 
The foes; here the raw colonists despised 
Around thee fought and with the battle swirled; 
Here was the hour that thy fresh folds baptized 
In blood and death; here thou wast blindly whirled 
From off the field and with defeat surprised; 
So crown, Oh crown these heights so grand memorialized! 

And you, ye spirits of these thirteen states 
Stand up again in your colonial gu'se! 
Though all is changed by that which new creates 
Ye still survive and higher still must rise! 
Behold the rich wide hemisphere that lies 
Beneath the skies ye made forever free, 
And this new race of vast gigantic size 
Wage other wars with strife and tyranny! 
Look forth, look forth ! Stretch your expanding eyes 
To north and south and far unto the sea. 
Had ye such dreams of state as now before ye flee? 

Ye later soldiers! Ye hosts that shake the globe! 
Ye moderns whose machines unmake as man! 
Whose monster guns and science powers disrobe 
The world's high civilizations as we scan, 
Behold these soldiers of nature's oldest plan! 
One round of shot; a forward rush; then hand 
To hand the great old struggle they began. 
Against the wall of being the outnumbered band 
Would plant themselvoB before oppression's clan: 
"Come on! Come on! We'll take the odds and stand." 
Such soldiers here have fought. Show us a better brand! 

Oh city vast! Beneath thy very feet they fought, 
But time and change obliterate all trace. 
First defenders though hero-like they wrought 
Scarce memory leaves to their succeeding race. 
Pause on thy course! With memory now repace 
Thy hist'ry from thy farthest pioneers! 

69 



Is it strange? Surprised? What crimsons so thy face? 
That yonder? A battle! It plows the spheres 
Of man! Into it! Thy fathers there embrace 
The tyrants that have ruled the ancient years. 
Break out, Oh city, break, and shake the earth with cheers! 

Great Uncle Sam doth on the Eagle rde 
And each alike for freedom ever strives. 
At every shrine though change and progress hide 
They open up the lore that memory hives. 
Upon these heights and shores a something rives 
The present from the past. The glorious strife 
Is lived again. The remembering Eagle drives 
Against the foe with elemental life. 
And Uncle Sam tears off the oppressor's gyves 
From his young soul. A flame and lightning kn:fe 
Lead on the fiercest line against oppressions rife. 

And ye, ye cosmopolitans of power 
That master, march and rule the course of time, 
Moulding the globe w'th scientific dower. 
Like and unlike the world-soul's dreams sublime, 
Ye far extremes to this is man's scale and clime 
Come face to face! Ye are the son and sire. 
His world is past and is to thee a mime; 
Thy world is here and vast with vast inspire, 
Put under all is na,tnre's manhood prime. 
Art thou a man? Respond unto the fire 
That planted, fed and fanned thy best divine desire! 

And thou, thou age and coming age of splendor. 
Of wealth and knowledge, magnificence and power! 
Exalted Life with glorious train attender 
No dreamer dreamed when dream looked from her tower! 
Forget thou not the first immortal hour 
When they fierce fought to set the whole world free. 
Slew old chaotic monsters that devour, 
Striking this plan better than sight could see. 
Forget thou not! Great virtues' high endowers 
Is still the best of all thy works and thee. 
And let a brighter flame unto their memory be! 

Cpon my eyes there streams a cloud of vision; 
It sweeps across all majesty and splendor. 
The mighty world feels something of derision 
As the vast mass swings round her as attender, 
Allegiance swear and blind throng as defender. 
'Tis Liberty, great Liberty divine! 
And round are guards that never knew surrender. 



The real "Old Guard," high types of heaven's design. 
Some of these guards when these young states did tender 
She accepted. Now forever on her line 
The fighters, founders, fathers with her own glorious shine. 

Oh City, State, great Nation and the World, 
There still is hope where e'er such virtues be. 
Though man and life by tyrants new are whirled 
The future high doth beckon unto thee. 
Stand up! Stand up! "Be strong but be more free! 
Freedom alone life's larger doors can ope. 
What now we are, whatever great we see 
Is but the fruit of Freedom's deadly cope. 
Feed thou the flame! Pledge life to Liberty! 
Line with the few! Stand up on plain and slope! 
Fight, fight for Liberty and give the future hope! 

OLD GLORY. 

Behold! Behold! The fathers there 

Shake out another banner. 
The elder nations start and stare 
And scorn and cursing scan her. 
But Liberty, the chosen Queen 

Of this new world did plan her. 
And new world spirits swift and keen 
With vital breath did fan her. 
Old Glory is a living thing; 

The life of life is flowing 
Within the bosom that we fling 

Unto the winds so blowing. 
The mother, sons and daughters sing 
And march with crimson glowing. 

Up, up the infant's rugged years 

This banner led the nation; 
Moulding the young chaotic spheres 

Unto a new creation. 
Vast, vast resources east and west; 
New peoples, times and stations; 
Old Glory led us far abreast 
And marched for dominations. 
Old Glory is a living thing, 

Soul of contagious fire, 
Riding the skies with eagle wing, 

Inspiring son and sire. 
Marching the ages as they sing 
Unto a nobler lyre, 

71 



Who up the evolution climbs 

With man and nature clashes. 
The young republic faced the times 

And dared the sword that flashes. ' 
Thou, thou the foremost in the fray 

Wert torn with mighty gashes; 
But shot nor shell nor sword could stay 
Thy fierce and forward dashes. 
Old Glory is a living thing; 

Pe.ace, peace her breast engages, 
But if the tyrants on us spring 

The ancient spirit rages- 
And just a call from her would bring 
The soldier of the ages. 

All round the vast unguided globe 

Old Glory is a glory. - 
All thrones and empires she could robe 

And lend them strain and story. 
No majesties and grandeurs prime 

Or splendors high and hoary 
To Liberty seems more sublime 
Than this Republic's glory. 
Old Glory is a living thing; 

Lfife in her breast is flowing; 
Who can her rhyme mounts to his prime 

With crimson ,joy and glowing. 
Oh let her swing! Her praises sing! 
The world grows with her growing. 

By city, forest, field and mead, 

On mountain, plain and ocean, 
To tower and mast. Oh nail her fast 

And stir the winds in motion! 
All citizens and soldier lines 

With music of devotion 
Shall lift her up and pledge the wines ,- 
Of Life's divinest potion. 

Old Glory is a living thing; 

Old Earth her life is feeding; 
The world-soul shakes her with a fling; 

"Cease, cease your gold and greeding! 
Who with this soul can mount and sing, 
They are the men I'm breeding." 



72 



QUEEN OF THE AGES. 

Arise, Arise! The glorious Fourth 

Another dawn is bringing. 
The East and West, the South and North 

Are up and foreward springing. 
For whom, for whom so splendor gowned 

The golden gates are swinging?' 
It is the Queen and foreward bound 
All hearts to her in singing. 

Oh sing the songs she taught to thee 

In thy historic pages. 
For Liberty must ever be 
The Queen of all the ages! 

The fathers, on this natal day 
Surprised the elder nations. 
They broke the yoke and flung away 

Old tyrant degradations. 
They gave new doctrines to the earth, 

Dreamed higher state creations, 
And this Republic brought to birth 
For world wide dominations. 
For better than the wise could scan 

They struck the plan of sages; 
For Liberty the world will van. 
The Queen of all the ages! 

The patriots' and the prophets' blood 

As in old time is leaping; 
The crimson, glowing, surging flood 

The swollen veins are sweeping; 
Great memories of the early strife 

Spring weaponed from their sleeping; 
The dreams that crown the brow of life 
The .future heights are keeping. 
Oh swell the patriotic strain! 
Their passictti still engages. 
Let Liberty forever reign 
The Queen of all the ages! 

Shall then the children of such sires. 

The births of such a mother, 
Rekindle not the altar fires 

That time and strife would smother? 
Electric passions burn and glow 

From each unto the other, 
Nor North nor South, nor friend nor foe, 

Each free born man is brother. 

73 



Oh feed the spirit of the sires! 

Oh feed it till it rages! 
For Liberty the free man fires 

The Queen of all the ages! 

Then ring the bells, the whistles blow. 

Start, start the cannon sounding! 
Musicians march and soldiers go 

To martial strains abounding. 
Old Glory take and swing her out 
Above the crowd surrounding! 
To heaven and earth a mighty shout 
All other praise is drownding! 

Oh shout it out! The free man's song 

Is through the earth contagious; 
Our Liberty, forever strong, 
Shall Queen the endless ages. 



THE CITIZEN'S SONG. 

In the city's heart I was cradled first 

And the modern mother's soul 
With impulsions vast in my being burst 

As the ocean tides that roll. 
I am filled with life, with a rush and sweep 

To run as the mother gives; 
For the elements rife in my being leap 

To live as the mother lives. 

I can rest alone in the city's heart; 

Her pulse has a vigorous beat; 
I am blind and lost when from her I part 

But alive where her humans meet. 
There the floods of life like the surging sea 

Burst into my mortal breast; 
And the climbing song of the free and strong 

Feeds dreams of immortal zest. 

I delight to stand on the Campus square 

With the works of man around; 
Then I back myself 'gainst the structures there 

And enlarge my . spirit's bound. 
I am vaster far than the steel-girt towers 

Or gods of the strife and gain. 
Like a master there all the place and powers 

I hold in my hand and brain. 

74 



There's a pleasure keen in the thronging mass; 

There's a joy where the many meet; 
Each electric soul doth a current pass 

With an incandescent heat. 
From the central heart are the batteries charged; 

With both are my spirits wired; 
Every contact there has the man enlarged 

And ambition fed and fired. 

As around I walk, what an atmosphere 

That the gods of old might quaff! 
'Tis the wine of life. With a boundless cheer 

I uplift it, drink and laugh. 
Strong, erect and prcud, wearing armor plate 

That was forged in the heart and brain, 
I can stand alone, I can stand up straight, 

And march in the victors' train. 

There's a quickening strife where the millions mart; 

There's a crimson, crimson glow; 
The spirit of life like the lightnings dart 

And drives with resistless "go.' 
There are lines and lines of electric life. 

There the voltage often shocks; 
But the man is found and the rending strife 

Plants firm on the iron rocks. 

There are always men on the crowded street. 

The men who can stand and fight 
For the wife and chiW^ for their drink and meat. 

For man and the cause of right. 
They are battle scarred, they are trained and tougli. 

King-men for the court and camp. 
The globe in her breast has no better stuff 

Than men of the city's stamp. 

I can feel myself in the city's heart, 

'Tis war to the knife, I trow. 
But the soldiers there in their struggles bart 

Dreams none but the greatest know. 
Therejs always life in the midst of strife; 

There's strength where the battles rage; 
There's a glorious glow both in friend and foe 

And rush where the strong engage. 

Both the loss and gain and the joy and pain 
I drink with an equal zest. 

75 



"Be the lord of life in the peace and strife!" 

Is law to my iron breast. 
I am not the saint that the preachers paint 

Nor sinner the high priests damn; 
Just the common type with a heavier stripe 

Of the good and bad I am. 

Oh many a time on the Campus square 

When I walked in pomp and pride, 
A remorseless strength did a punch impart 

Till the count was more than cried. 
As the great are bowed, as the strong are thrashed, 

I was taught as they teach the wise; 
But another rose and was gowned and sashed 

As the man that bears the prize. 

She's a brutal brute; she's a shameless bawd; 

She has spit and tramped me down; 
She has kissed my feet with a loud applaud 

When I tore from her renown. 
There is praise and scorn for her daily born; 

She is little as strong and great; 
^^e doth ruthless bleed; she doth wisdom feed 

And my every mood can mate. 

From my mother's heart I can never part; 

I'm cogged in the vast machine; 
The increasing sv^irl to my spirits hurl 

Lrife's spice and her relish keen. 
Take the peace and balm of the country calm 

But give me the crowded mart; 
Let my spirits run where they first begun 

And course through the city's heart. 



THE SOCIALISTIC SLOGAN. 

"Each for all; all for the each!" 

Oh what a golden, golden speech! 

The best philosophy that time 

Has dreamed or thought or sung in rhyme; 

The thrice distilled extracted truth 

That Life has poured out of her rath; 

Archangel dream, celestial lore, 

For ages high a basic score; 

Oh what a godlike, godlike speech! 
"Each for the all; all for the each;" 

76 



"All for the each; each for the all;" 

The new age trumpets' herald call; 

The prophet and poetic throng 

Swell up the surges of the song. 

Old earth that in her travailing cries, 

High heaven that in sorrow sighs, 

Sore wounded Life, Time, Man and Hope, 

Leap up anew on plain and slope; 

Hark, hark. Oh hark! What is that call? 

"All for the each; each for the all." 

''Each for the all; all for the each." 
Look on the past! Now foreward reach! 
What deadly strife! Inhuman greed 
On human life doth feed and feed. 
Red cannibals most rank and raw 
Upon each other feed their maw. 
Before now comes upon our s'ght, 
A glorious race girded with might, 
For thought and action sing the speech, 
"Each for the all; all for the each." 

"All for the each; each for the all." 
Old Greed, and Strife thou dost appall. 
The anarchs of the olden reign 
Shall slay before they shall be slain. 
Branded, defamed, defiled, and torn, 
Thou like thy kind must suffer scorn. 
Truth crucified is most divine 
And sways the ages that untwine. 
Supreme art thou. To thee we fall. 
"All for the each; each for the all." 

"Each for the all; all for the each." 
The noblest song that Life can teach. 
In every land, all tongue and tone 
Will throne thee on the spirit's throne. 
The sphere thou wilt anew create, 
The man reform and with thee mate; 
These vast mechanics, lores and laws, 
Poetic lyres and prophet awes 
Must bend unto the golden speech 
"Each for the all; all for the each." 

"All for the each; each for the all." 
The banners blaze, the trumpets call; 
To marching music wed the creed 
That solves all want and strife and greed. 
On morning's pillars carve it bright; 

77 



Blaze it upon the dcme of night; 
Deep burn it on the heart and brain, 
And hurl it on the gods of gain. 
Life, Man, and Hope, it doth enthrall. 
"All for the each; each for the all." 

"Each for the all; all for the each;" 

The poet dies but lives !he speech. 

A song can break the customs old 

And cast all life in nobler mould. 

Behold there! Through the gates of morn 

Now comes a line no eye can scorn. 

These humans are a glorious race 

And life is now a godlike grace. 

For all now live the golden speech: 

"Each for the all; all for the each." 

MARCH SONG FOR SOCIALISTS. 

Arise, ye socialists, arise! 

The skies that now are arching 
Are echoing with the trumpet cries 

That calls for "up and marching." 
Line up with life! O shake the earth! 

Think for the thoughtless nation! 
Another dream has come to birth, 
Has come to crown creation. 

March on, great Socialism, march! 

Thou dream of all the ages! 
Oh give her place!! She giveth grace 

To life in all her stages. 
And only they can king the race 
This dream of life engages, 

"Each for himself. To hell with all!" 

What shout to bloody battle! 
The doctrine doth high heaven appal, 

These humans treats as cattle. 
March on and trample down the creed 

That makes a hell and devils. 
Oh hail the new born brother breed 

Upon life's highland levels! 

March on, great Socialism, march! etc. 

"Each for the all; all for the each" 

Oh what a theme for singing! 
The world-soul hears the golden speech 

And hopes anew are springing. 

78 



The future barkens to the song; 

Such music sets her burning; 
The tides of life with passion strong 

Unto the dream are turning. 

March on, great Socialism, march! etc 

The people should themselves possess, 

The earth and her resources; 
Why should old Greed the race oppress 

And map these human courses? 
March on. Oh Dream, divine and best 

Of all the state creations! 
The future race with thee is blest 

And greets thee with elations. 

March on, great Socialism, march! etc. 

March on, Oh Dream! Thy soldiers march! 

The future is inviting; 
But twixt you and yon golden arch 
Are ranks drawn up for fighting. 
Since none are men who cannot fight, 

Since good fights are a glory. 
For mankind, friends and social right 
Oh fight like those of story! 

March on, great Socialism, march! 

Thou dream of all the ages! 
Oh give her place! ! She giveth grace 

To life in all her stages. 
And only they can king the race 
This dream of life engages. 



THE HANDWRITING. ' 

Wealth, honor and station, '. 

Pride, pomp and elation, i 

Power, fashion and fame and all forms of high mould, ] 

Neath domes of high splendor, i 

With trumpet attender j 
Were gathered to feast like the nobles of old. 

They boasted their glories, 

Their exploits were stories, ! 

The rulers they were and would reign to all time. ] 

Birth had them appointed, \ 

God had them anointed. ■ 

Life had them enthroned and the world did them chime. i 

'79 .'i 



Each swore new alliance 

And voted defiance 
Unto the vast masses, poor, hungry and cold. 

Out, out they were bolted, 

Down, down they were jolted. 
And scorned as the feast and the feasters grew bold. 

When revels were highest 

Alarm sudden criest 
For there wrote an arm with a sword glowing white. 

The lightning-like flashes 

And deep spirit gashes 
The feasters to fear and to frenzy did fright. 

Belshazzar did sicken, 

His nobles were stricken. 
As conscience did point to the masses they sold. 

"God angels and heaven, 

Replevin, replevin. 
And read us the word that is shining untold!" 

Financiers with millions, 

Insane for the billions 
Rushed in to behold the great line that was wrote. 

They swore at the danger. 

Defied the great stranger. 
And pledged all their wealth to more solidly vote. 

The senate assembled. 

With ague they trembled, 
Perspiring in fear, growing burning or cold. 

"Oh find a magician, 

Some scholar, linguisian. 
To read us the truth that these symbols doth hold." 

The supreme court usurpers, 

The peoples' extirpers. 
Fought over the word with the lesralist lore. 

They were equal divided, 

But all were one sided, 
Twas "unconstitutional" whatever it bore. 



}r^^ 



All wrangled and jangled, 

Were tangled and strangled 
With shame, wrath and fear at the truth it might fold 

"All honor and station, 

A throne in the nation, 
To him who delivers the message here scrolled." 

80 



An old congress verger 

Sought out Victor Berger: 
"Oh find us, oh find us the prophet called Debs! 

Big Belshazzar shaketh, 

His counselors quaketh, 
Before but a line from the arm of the plebs." 

Like Daniel the older, 

But straighter and bolder, 
He marched to the front of their pomp, pride and gold 

Again the arm flashes. 

Again the sword gashes 
The line written oft as the ages have rolled. 

"Your days they are finished, 

Your powers are diminished, 
For man now ariseth and mounteth your thrones. 

The purple transgressors. 

Crowned, crimson oppressors. 
The Spirit of Life hence forever disowns." 



WASHINGTON. 

High honored and immortal spirit pure! 
We love to stand and contemplate thy soul; 
For such a man the furnaces endure 
And such a dream a nation great can pole 
What stormy times or evolutions roll. 
Wert thou not one the mighty mother lent 
When the latest resurrection shook the whole 
Created frame and democracy was sent 
Into the world? To wrest Life's high control 
From tyranny thou wert chosen, formed and bent 
A.nd led the fierce rebellions old ancient empires rent. 

Thou wert a man. Old Nature stamped thee great 
And wrote it on thy course and countenance. 
Life needed men. There was the galling weight 
Of tyrants, a continent hung in suspense 
And generations were slaves or freemen hence. 
No wonder Liberty took hold on thee 
And armed thee strong for all the world's defense. 
Fronting the great, the sword they made thy plea. 
Small was the sphere, the issues most immense. 
The Union lived, and thou must ever be 
An ideal patriot and freeman of the free. 

81 



Thou hast cutscared the limits of thy kind. 
Thrice purged above the blemishes of crime 
Thou art enthroned, replenished and divined 
With virtues and immortal passions prime. 
Exalted where we mortals cannot climb 
There is a mythologic largeness vast 
Up'on thy spirit, and atmospheres sublime 
That lifteth soul from the repressive past. 
¥/e cannot dream thee back in struggling time 
^nd with our great thou canst no more be classed. 
Tne high immortal peers are through thy spirit glassed. 

To just a few is given the glorious right, 
To be revered, lifted and throned divine. 
Purged and renewed of every mortal blight 
And clothed with grace that like the sun doth shine; 
To just a few, time, place and virtue line 
That nations choose and throne as their ideal, 
And Lfife delights to fill them as a shrine 
And heaven stamps on them her highest seal; 
To just a few the Fates are so benign 
As gods they rise, the best of life reveal 
And still grow more divine as on the ages wheel. 

And such w'ert thou. The nation at her birth 
V/ith that instinct that never knows untruth 
Chose thee the type of all she dreamed of worth 
Or she could wish to guide her growing youth. 
Though she was >oung, strong, native and uncouth. 
And we have marched to undreamed civilizations, 
Been torn by strife and taught by bitter ruth 
Thou still doth guide the Union's aspirations. 
The world outgrows all but eternal truth. 
Our dreams, inventions, powers and wealth and stations 
Stand still and think and bow to thy soul's dominations. 

In other days the heroes of mankind 
Were throned and pictured on the midnight skies, 
That thus exploit and character might bind 
The generations unto a larger prize. 
As their ideal was sketched before the eyes 
On such gigantic scales as did command 
The larger soul within them to arise, 
So thou are spread on this Republic grand 
A great ideal no mortal dare despise 
For widening hosts by thee are taught to stand. 
Feel fire within the heart and strength in each right hand. 

82 



We see thee walking up and down the nation, 
Tlie great presiding genius of all life, 
Moulding the form of each new generation. 
Still moulding men out of destroying strife. 
Great national type with elements as rife 
As is our growth to cosmopolitan scope. 
Oft time is cut as by a lightning knife 
And face to face we meet thee up the slope. 
Life's passions rise as to the soldier's fife; 
New girded, armed and kindled with new hope 
Thy spirit in us burns to meet the foes that cope. 

Above and throned upon this mighty nation, 
That grew from it and feeds it life's inspire, 
There is a gathering, glorious congregation, 
Immortals that this mortal sphere doth sire. 
Genius, Valor, Honor and Strength and Fire 
Are gathered there and feed the lofty mind. 
The music, dreams and memories of desire. 
Thou standest there amid thy kindred-kind, 
As thou stoodst here amid the strife and ire, 
A spirit tall whose character doth bind 
The souls of largest men these growing states can find. 

And yet we build our towering monuments. 
Marble and bronze unto the azure skies. 
Tin they become formality and offense 
Ulito the soul and blindness to the eyes. 
But let it pass. Spirit to spirit cries. 
Thou art enthroned within the civic heart. 
Thy image on imagination flies 
Till sense and strife and selfishness depart 
And soul within doth unto thee arise. 
Life sees the lines of her prophetic chart 
In splendor bursting forth and blinding sense and mart. 

LINCOLN. 

Oh nature p.reat! Oh virtue of the nation! 
Oh spirit high, enthroned upon the height! 
A type supreme of higher soul creation 
That grows divine unto our mortal blight! 
Thou feedest to our far-uplifted sight 
<« The greatest need of life and time and nations, 
For thou wert one the powers of truth and right 
Sent into lite, and up our hard gradations 
Train thee for strife against the storms of night. 
Victorious soul! Spirit of inspirations! 
One of the dreams of man! One of God's high creations! 

83 



Nature was cruel and yet most kind to thee 
When thou wert cast down at the base of life 
For at the base great things and men must be. 
Thy towering strength, ungainly gaunt, was rife 
With jest and many a sarcastic knife 
Cut into thee. The kind old rugged nurse 
Bound up thy wounds and with a Spartan fife 
Bade thee to stand and face the powers that curse. 
She put thee against the growing strife 
And with thy growth did stir the elements worse, 
Until at last alone, strong as the universe. 



Oft, often locked in many a mortal strife. 
The vanquished spared or flung off bruised or dead, 
Thou, rising up with fountains of new life. 
Didst front the men whoi shook earth with their tread 
Into the pass where hosts in vain had bled 
The mother thrust and knew that thou wouldst van 
The world, for thy humanity was red 
Por generous life and for all men did plan. 
Strong was the arm, high, high the lighted head,' 
Wise, wise the eye that did the nation scan 
When thy organic strength took up the cause of man. 



There was a day when Liberty's young nation 
Desired a man to save the institutions. 
"Arise, arise!" she cried in desperation, 
"Against the storms, traitors and executions ■ 
That threaten death to time's best evolutions!" 
Thou camest forth. The nation saw. Great Right 
Sprang up and spurned her abject prostitutions. 
Ready for war but shrinking from the fight, 
Forth to the strife, defying soft solutions. 
Into the black and lightning flashing night 
To victory they went with thy contagious might. 

Through those four years, blood-stained and stormed and 
What heavy weights and crimson, crimson tears [plowed 
Thy spirit shed and often body bowed! 
The stress of war eclipsed the world with fears. 
But thou wert found, one of creation's peers, 
A grand old type that man forever hails 
And stations high to crown these mortal spheres. 
Great leader strong, gath'ring the line that fails. 
A hero true the battle front reveres, 
Courage and faith that o'er assault prevails, 
A master man of men no time or greatness pales. 

84 



High, generous and most magnanimous soul! ^ 
F'ne quality, the rarest in the earth! 

■ Part of the Infinite whose virtues roll ■ 

And now and then find being from the dearth! i 

Man's moulds were broke; time's standards of all worth I 

Destroyed; ideals old dethroned, and new j 

Conceptual forms rose to immortal birth. • i 

Plain, simple, honest, common and warm and true, ■ 

Thy rich, magnanimous soul of saving mirth '■ 

Leads hence the mind to the highest heights we view, | 

And man and life and time in form divine renew. J 

.i 

Leader, martyr, prophet and president, - i 
Where the great cosmopolitan councils meet, 

Those spirits vast unanimous in consent ] 
Invite thee up to their presiding seat. 
Great congregation, where the ages greet 

Each other, and time's mightiest souls unite i 

To rain on earth the life that is our meat, : 

Out of your hosts of genius, lore and might, i 

Courage and faith, self-sacrifice and feat, j 

Have ye but one that measures to his height? \ 

A higher type of man to rule you as his right? i 

i 

Though far aloft and growing more divine, \ 

Wider the years and intervening space, : 

Rare magic powers out of thy spirit twine \ 

And bind thee close, still closer to our race. | 

The ripe humanity upon thy face, i 

Thy warm hand-clasp and eyes inviting kind j 

Draw into life out of our hearts' embrace, ; 
"Father," "Brother," "Prophet," and names that bind 

The hearts of men across all time and place. i 
Oh spirit great! Though thee ourselves we find; 

Thou feedest us with life; through thee we are divined. j 



GRANT. 

Men like a fighter. The elemental life 
That surges up, driving the universe 
Forever with convulsive strain and strife 
Leaps into soul and doth forever nurse 
Yearnings for him no battles can coerce. 
Men like the man who fronts these grinding spheres. 
Defying Fate and all she can-unpurse. 
That armored stands gainst darkness, death and fears 
And from the deep calls the eternal curse. 
When such a soul upon the globe appears 
Men stand in pause and feed the hunger of their years. 

85 



And such wert thou, a true heroic soul, 
A noble type though in deceptive mould, 
So blinded Life that should our spirits pole 
Neglected thee. Thy mighty powers unrolled 
Were all penned up, and in that narrow hold 
Were battles fierce that rent thy globe with strife. 
Great spirit-gifts that find no end unfold 
Within the heart hell's elemental life. 
Who, who could dream thy spirit long unpoled 
Fought not dark fi'ends with fierce distempers r;'fe 
And learned to wield a sword swift as the lightning's knife? 

When thou didst hear great Liberty's last call 
To free the world and ages of all slaves 
That mighty Soul thy spirit did enthrall 
And gave the sword but prophesied the graves; 
Such was the prize, but such as thou but craves 
The fiercest fields for glorious Liberty. 
Erect and poised, calm, wise and strong, the waves 
Of strife dashed on tempestuous as the sea; 
But like a rock round which the tempest raves 
Thou didst out-think, out-wear, out-fight and be 
The genius of the strife and hope of victory. 

From Donalson to Appomattox close 
Thou foughtest on resistless as is Fate. 
Through bloody fields and earthquake rending throes 
Where Death all troops did fiercest mutilate 
Thou pressest on nor dreamed to hesitate. 
Life stood aghast. The world cried out in fear. 
Thy erstwhile friends curses did imprecate. 
Real war is hell. To some thou didst appear 
A demon mad but blood could satiate. 
Yet through it all Mercy divine and dear 
Sat on thy fighting soul to guide the world's career. 

Thy iron strength was wed to granite truth. 
Thy reverence for the laws was most sublime. 
Simplicity dwelt in thy heart with ruth 
And honor there with sovereign power did rhyme. 
Magnanimousness, the seal on spirits prime, 
Was stamped on thee by heaven's highest hand; 
Yet all of these passed through the fires like crime 
Till at the last thy spirit forth did stand 
One of the hierarchal souls of time 
That Life and Man forever shall command. 
First, first in ruthless war! First, first in Mercy's band! 



86 



If ever man stood on the adamantine 
Bases of his manhood and could dispense 
With all the paraphernalias chat win 
The world, thou wert that man. Pride and pretense 
Are guilded twins and were to thee offense. 
Thy royal greatness despised life's little shows 
And stood before the world in that defense 
That character and fiercest fight bestows. 
We cannot dream round thee the ornaments 
Of kings, and placed in royal lineage rows 
Thou towerest over them as Conqueror over foes. 

Pew, few, but few of all the soldier line 
Could cross full swords or stand up straight with thee. 
A Washington or Cromwell spirit fine. 
Fighting to set life's highest spirit free. 
Thy equals are, the most but butchers be. 
Great soldier chief, thou art a man's delight! 
Glory and power shall never from thee flee! 
Who clears himself where g;'ant spirits fight 
Draws giant men with swift resistless plea. 
In every man a, soldier stands upright 
And meeting thee salutes with passions glowing white. 

When thou didst go life's last and lonely march 
Thy name and deeds were clothed with immortality. 
Musicians, troops, banners, applauso and arch 
Conducted thee unto the high courtality 
Of fame. With the hosts of this mortality, 
The eternal great did welcome thee on high. 
Bright splendor did adorn the wide portality 
And round it hosts of geniuses did cry: 
"Welcome, thrice welcome, thou grand reality 
Of life! Great Liberty is Queen within this sky; 
Be thou her right hand strength and stand forever nigh." 

"For thou are one of the eternal great. 
High elements were poured in thee at birth. 
Thoug-h almost snuffed by blind remorseless Fate 
Thou foughtest through the darkness, strife and dearth 
Unto these thrones of everlasting worth. 
Now this immortal Fellow^ship sublime 
That doth sustain and recreate the earth, 
Commissions thee unto an office prime: 
'Upon thy kind from center to its girth, 
Rain thou thy life, and from repressive time 
Lead this young nation up to our celestial clime.' " 



87 



WILSON. 

Hail, hail to thee, chief officer of state! 
Prime leader of this forward marching nation! 
The pillared strength anl fighter against fate 
And crown upon the earth s supremest station! 
Hail, hail again, we sing with admiration, 
For man in thee outweighs the office great 
And thou art what doth give us domination! 
Manhood outswings all offices in weight 
And thrones and crowns are things of small creation. 
Hail, hail again! The office thou canst mate 
And greater both will be and lend each other state. 

Devoid of all spectaculars and noise. 
Rich gifted with the powers that rule the spheres. 
Thou art a fullness and splendidly in poise. 
All ruddy ripe and fronting straight the years. 
Thou art a Saul among the time's compeers; 
Upon thy brow "Unsaleable" is wrote; 
Thy feet tread down the coward's hopes and fears; 
A clarion voice give Life another note 
And on thine eyes are visions of the seers; 
These visions high that Life and Love have smote 
Then hailest with delight and all to them devote. 

A few great dreams have flashed out of thy mind. 
Births of the mind and nurslings of the heart, 
Great plans and hopes for this lost human kind. 
To lift, restore, regenerate, impart 
An impulse to the spirit's godlike chart. 
Thou dreamest not the dreams of place and power. 
Nor any blinded selfishness doth bart, 
But those that Life doth ever disendower 
And those that Love doth into being start. 
The greatest of this time destroying hour 
Are dreamers and the dreams that on high heaven tower. 

Thou wert the very first that could dispense 
With friendships and alliances of gold, 
Rending afar with infinite offense 
The money power that politics controlled. 
Erect and strong as any knight of old 
Down thou didst fling the gauntlet to the kings 
While vast surprise the world did silent hold 
And prostrate Right sprang up with boundless springs. 
It was a sight high heaven on us rolled 
When thy first chief fought rank corruption's things 
And drove the dragons back where darkness broods and clings. 

88 



As once one drove with fiercest indignation 
Vile traffickers out of the house of prayer 
And lifted high for love and contemplation ■ 
Ideals Life upon her heart should bear, 
So didst thou drive with passion rich and rare 
The lobbyist that wrote and forced the law. 
Who can wonder that common men should dare 
To spurn to hell judges and courts so raw 
With blasphemies gainst Justice? Who could share 
Life moral sense and not the lightning draw 
And like a sword it wield and Life restore to awe? 

Thou sure are sealed with a magnanimous stamp; 
The nation's noblest life doth dwell in thee; 
When others would have struck a soldier's camp 
And on torn Mexico have marched with glee 
Thy message was a trumpet like the sea. 
Did not great Liberty rejoice to hear? 
Can nations prime continue more to be 
The plunderers of warring factions near? 
Shall not the future echo forth thy plea? 
5hall not the "case" sustain a peaceful sphere? 
Shall honor, right and strength not mount on their career? 

The only great immortals of mankind 
Are those that stand gainst time's eternal drift. 
Who sacrifice themselves and virtue find 
To stem the *flood and strong resistance lift 
Against chaotic endless move and shift. 
Defy the strength of selfishness and craft! 
Scorn to the deep corruption's guilded gift! 
Draw full the sword on this eternal graft 
And front the curse with lightning sure and swift! 
From such the world a cup of life has quaffed 
And built her highest hopes around the godlike shaft. 

Time's promises take on prophetic port. 
The dreams of life are kindling with new hope. 
Some are ordained and Destiny doth sort 
To lead the state still higher up the slope. . 
Art thou so born? There will be deadly cope 
For still the cosmos and the chaos fight. 
Who leads these hosts that blind and bleeding grope. 
Stands for the cause of all men's highest right. 
Reveres the dreams, speaks as the visions ope, 
He oft is struck, struck with the lightning white. 
But out of death is life and out of darkness light. 

.89 



Great Letter's great Republic hopes in thee. 
The family pride is swelling in each breast. 
We stand up straight and walk right on to see 
A scholar on the nation's highest crest, 
But wisdom soon the pride has dispossessed. 
Some drop the harp and take the soldier's sword; 
Some leave the book and mount the rostrum blest; 
Some lift the pen and golden truth unhoard 
And through the night some with the angel wrest. 
Two great Republics upon thee hope have stored 
And they have faith that time shall never thee unlord. 



EMERSON. 

Oh the wise of heart! Oh the wise of mind! 

Oh the soul and lips most wise! 
For the wise all through with a wisdom true 

Is the soul of the world-soul's sighs. 
An infinite need, an eternal greed 
Calls the wise man forth that alone can feed. 

Though the dreamers' dreams gleam in rainbow liglit 

And bards sing the songs we hail. 
Though the heroes' deeds are before our sight 

And prophets the gods unveil, 
Through it all Life cries for an utterance wise 
And without it scorns all the high disguise. 

The eternal past with its prayer-like dirge. 

The "to be" that forever cries 
To the travailing earth and the endless urge: 

"Oh send us a soul most wise!" 
Both called unto thee and earth, air and sea 
From her great soul stuff set thy spirit free. 

Old nature, the nurse, nursed thy heart and mind; 

Thou wert sevenfold chosen seed; 
Prophets, books and schools unto thee were kind 

And the sciences new did feed. 
The great cosmic soul through thy heart did roll 
To the thinking man that is being's goal. 

Thou wert stamped and sealed with a royal seal, 
Thou couldst see and think and write; 

The eternal real that the wise reveal 
Shines forth from thy page of light. 

'Tis the royalist sign of a genius fine 

To utter the thoughts from the spheres divine. 

90 



Not the poet's song nor the prophet's rage 

Were the gifts of grace to thee, 
But the piercing eyes and an utterance wise 

From the heart of reality. 
With a solar sight and a cosmic right 
Thou didst pierce all forms to the spirit white. 

There is depth of life, there is moral thought, 

There is quick'ning crystal truth, 
A rich golden lore that old age can store 

And words that are life to youth; 
Thy thoughts could be gehfs in the diadems 
Of the circling years and their scepter stems. 

Words with nature's force, thoughts with heaven's power 

And lines like the thunder bolts, 
Thou hast wrung like Life from the age and hour 

And armed with the old earth volts. 
With resources rife, with dynamic life 
Doth thy sentence cut like a razor knife. 

At the portal door of the temple life 

As a priest of old art thou. 
With divinest truth that impassioned youth 

Might bind on his burning brow. 
Thou dost lift thy cries: "Oh be wise, be wise! 
It is only thought that can mount the skies!" 

By the gate of time thou dost sit sublime 

As one of the wisest few 
That command the spheres of our solar years 

When our dreams are found untrue. 
He is sure a sage that can man engage 
Who has sounded life and has made her page. 

In the palace vast of the thoughtful mind 

Thou sittest in simple state. 
But the master powers that can rule the hours 

Oft around thee congregate. 
Then to hear thee read, with a hungry greed 
All are reaching forth and their passions feed. 

Who can read thy best and apprise thy worth 

He is one of the world's first born. 
There's a heart and mind of a royal kind 

That all books and schools can scorn. 
It is only the great that with thee can mate 
And thy company keep on the high estate. 

91 



Tnou dost give the thought and the impulse quick 

That the mental passions feed. 
We outgrow thy hour and the spirit's dower 

Doth reject the page we read. 
Thou dost sometimes write and the line in sight 
Is but empty words with a show of light. 

But thy sifted lore is as chosen wheat, 

Soul wheat for the future earth; 
It is scattered wide on the time and tide 

And lives in each higher b.rth. 
On the new age brow is a light which thou 
Didst restore to earth though it disavow. 

Though the most neglect, there are some elect 

That delight thy page to read; 
They are just a few, but erect and true 

They march to the thinkers' creed; 
And the thinker's breed is the chosen seed 
That mounteth the spheres and her courses lead. 

When the libraries vast have been melted down 

And one book alone shall be. 
But a word or line from the most will shine 

But a page shall be there from thee; 
For the truth shall stay when the night and day 
And the worlds of strife shall have passed away. 

Again I can hear the eternal cries 

Of the past and great "to be:" 
"Oh send us the soul of the noblest wise 

From the heart of eternity! 
Life doth ever wait at her mortal gate 
For the man whose thoughts are the laws of state." 



TO ASTRONOMY. 

Oh Astronomy! Astronomy! 
Thou art the Queen of sciences. The universe 
Is thy boundless empire, and eternity 
Tliy throne of majesty where thou dost unpurse 
An infinity of fullness and disburse 
Thy blessings unto the wide creation. 
The worlds thou liftest from chaotic curse 
And round thy everlasting station 
Spirit-like they congregate. They glorious verse 
Thy presence, splendor and exaltation 
Which round the heavens casts sublimest fascination. 

92 



Thou art the mother of intellectual 
Being. Thou bringest forth the passioned hour 
Of intensities in man and time's usurping spell 
Destroyest in his heart. Thou art the power 
Whose expansion recreates with vast endower 
These faculties, and communicates to soul 
The transcendental elements that tower 
On high. The mighty amplitudes that roll 
Through thy uncircled spirit becomes our 
Temperamental quality, and to the whole 
Created universe thou dost our spirits pole. 

Oh mother of this heaven soaring mind! 
Oh mother of this godlike breasted heart! 
Oh parent of divine begotten kind 
Which thee and thine within our beings start! 
What creations to a shining chart 
Sublimer than the worlds! What intensities 
Of passion which thy spirits free impart! 
What expansion beyond the cumberous densities 
Of earth! and what idealisms dart 
Upon us changing time's propensities, 
As we are race to face with thee and thy immensities! 

Oh imperial passioned mother of the great! 
What mean these strange experiences of time? 
Why are we led to bound this incommensurate 
Creation? Why are we forced to the prime 
Battle of being and with elements sublime 
Contend until the mastery "we gain? 
Why thus impelled these awful heights to climb? 
And inspired to understand the strain 
Thy systems round forever on us chime? 
Why conflict, conquest, triumph and a plane 
Where these mechanics vast go circling in the brain? 

What means this most memorial sacrament 
To life's intelligence and the significance 
Of this baptism into the element- 
Al powers of being? What means this inductance 
To the vast estates that base the super-sense 
Abilities? and this domestication 
Of a child of time in the wide immens- 
ities of uncircumscribed creation? 
What means this capacity of immanence 
And transcendency o'er matter and mutation 
By the earth-born, mortal, and prisoner to his station? 

93 



Does it not mean there is a living breath 
And being shaped upon the Infinite? 
Something unkindred to space and time and death. 
And in its element upon the summit 
Of creation, drinking in most passionate 
The splendors of intelligence and power 
And life and beauty that forever flit 
Across its bosom. Is not the glorious hour 
Out of the deep and from the heights of spirit? 
Does it not prophet-like announce our 
Certain immortality as fruit foretells the flower? 

Can this being of intensest consciousness? 
Of length and breadth and height and depth and sweep 
Beyond all limits that upon us press, 
Return again into its native deep 

Of nothingness? Can this heart and mind that keep 
The universe within its compass drink 
Annihilaticn"? Will it not rather leap 
When it dolh come to nature's awful brink. 
To freedom, power and glory on the steep 
Of heaven? How impossible to think 
Creation's crown of life in death can ever sink! 

Oh Nature, Night and Astronomic Soul! 
Oh infinite and most eternal power 
That through mankind and all creations roll 
The fullness that thy being doth endower! 
Is this not where ye bring the narrow hour 
Of our mortality to deep baptize 
It in eternity whose spirit doth devour 
The bondage sense that on this mortal lies? 
Another consciousness comes up to tower 
Commandingly upon the azure skies. 
And round the starry spans casts her imperial eyes. 

Oh Night! Oh Night! Oh most beloved Night! 
Mother and nurse of being's powers divine! 
Oh cast thy spells of starry magic might 
Upon our minds and still more make them thine! 
Under thy constellations, Oh pour the wine 
Of living thought upon this thirsty mortal 
And fellowship our low, unworthy line! 
Oh lead us through each starry flaming portal 
And lift us to the height of thy design! 
Oh clothe us with thy character so courtal 
And like thy splendors bright, Oh march us on immortal! 

94 



THE CONSTELLATIONS. 

Oh Night, Oh Night! Oh glorious, glorious night! 
Though born and bred and destined for the day 
Man's spirit leaps with infinite delight 
When he is caught by thy resistless sway 
And walks with thee along thy starry way. 
Mother and queen and goddess most div'ne! 
A matchless grace doth round thy presence play 
And atmospheres we mortals drink as wine. 
Tliou liftest soul and girdest up this clay 
To stand and think as Time's hand doth untwine 
The universes vast that round these portals shine. 

Oh what a sight for lofty contemplation, 
For intellectual strength, archangel thought. 
Silence, passion, wonder, admiration, 
And all the powers of being overfraught! 
What boundless elements are here together brought 
To mind destroy and nobler recreate 
To something like the Infinite! All nought 
And insignificant is man's estate 
Of genius ripe conception when he is caught 
Into the starry heavens to contemplate 
The vast establishments that round him roll in state. 

Oh what a sight for admiration's eyes 
Is high enthroned on everlasting stations! 
What white intensities within the skies 
Here radiate their lightning scintillations! 
What majesties of light! Illuminations 
Of magnificence! Effulgencies of bright- 
Est splendor and flashing coruscations 
Athwart the answering canopy of n'ght! 
What immensities and vast creations 
Of solar brightness and incandescence white 
Are flaming round the dome on all created sight! 

Spirit of night, I see thy glorious 
Constellations, thy constellations bright 
And so supremely poised on their victorious 
Stations like thrones in prominential sight 
Upon creation's lofty heightless height. 
Thy constellations, like world divinities, 
Are with such striking majesty bedight 
They rise among the vast infinities 
That crown the universe with an effulgent light. 
These spirits seem clothed with sublime sublimities 
That more than equipoise all mortal magnanimities. 

95 



These high celestial pageantries, the marches 
Of these splendors and bright majestic dowers 
O'er the else unpictorial walls and arches 
Are like creation dreams marching amid the hours. 
The procession of these congregated powers 
Crossing the expanse in their nocturnal 
Courses, these circles round ther annuar bowers 
Where all burst forth in bright hibernal 
Brilliancy or pale as summer heat devours. 
These mxarches of processional pomp supernal, 
Tis but the universe along its path eternal. 



Spirit of Night, I see thy glorious 
Constellations, a noble consanguinity 
And ancient fellowship in victorious 
Exaltation circling the vast infinity 
Of being. These in their high sublimity 
Flash recognition to all the kingly race; 
Or the esemplastic spirit of affinity 
Flaming through all the hemispheral space 
Answers each or some enthroned divinity. 
What incandescent eyes and lightning grace 
Each has and flaming throws upon each others face? 



Behold, Behold! Here is the most supremest 
Reach of beauty in nature's plastic arts, 
A perfect vision of the life that streamest 
Within the deep of her deep heart of hearts. 
The spirit of sublimest beauty starts 
Into virtue here, and round each presence high 
Nature casts a fashion that imparts 
Rich overflowing glories on the sky. 
The beautifuls on these celestial charts 
Enchant the strength of Life's poetic eye, 
Sustain her passioned heart as they poise and swing and fly? 

Spirit of Night, I love thy glorious 
Constellations, established on the height 
Of time and forever more victorious 
Above the gulf. Ye are a vast delight 
And what mysterious transcendencies of might 
Sustain ye on the blank and hungry void 
As the world's best stability! Thy bright 
Illuminations could seem to be destroyed 
By breath but this emblazonry of night, 
So blessed, so beatific and enjoyed 
Is more than is the world by firm foundations buoyed. 

96 



What high and pure sublimities shine here, ', 

Of mystery, of wonder and of awe, i 

And of those breathless contemplations dear . j 
Where time's creations unto their highest draw! . ^ 

What majesty and sovereignty of law! ) 

What incarnations of almighty power! I 

What transformation from the rude raw ' 

Elements of chaos into this bower ■'. 

Of firmamental brightness! Life saw 1 
The garnished heavens and humbled in that hour 

Loves more thy solemn dome than noonday's golden tower. ] 

Spirit of Night, I love thy glorious ] 

Constellations in that ideal state -i 

Designed for them ere their victorious j 

Emergence from the dark contentious gate j 

Of chaos. Supernity is like a weight i 

Of glory on them and the immortal i 

Is burning in their exaltations great. j 

In the else black concave they make a courtal | 

Majesty and magnificent estate. j 

What strength conceives a more emblazoned portal I 
Around this travailing earth, around her courses mortal? 

Yonder the Great Bear prowls around the pole; ; 

There Cassiopeia and her family reign; i 

Here Taurus with his brilliant clusters roll; 
Near Orion's belted strength is a plain 
Triangle of three glorious stars. The strain 
Of the Harp and Aquila's boundless flight 
Hear and behold! See! Sagittarius has lain 
His arrow to the Serpent's heart and white 
Arcturus lights the maid without a slain. 
The classic symbols dwindle left and right. 
The poles are scant of stars, the center crowded bright. j 

i i ! ' 

Right through these constellations high, the moon. 
An earth-born child adopted by the night, 
Swift circles like a princess of the noon 
Though with some veil upon her face of light. 
That soul of splendor across the bright 
Concave is to the world a warm desire 
And forevermore a passion and delight. 
Oh Virgin Soul of pure and palest fire, 
Sail on thy course and on earth's lifted sight 
Thy smile still rain the magic of inspire _ 

And every wax and wane shall make thy presence nigher 

97 



As long as I shall tread this mortal sphere 
Oh let me rise unto some tower or hill! 
Divorce my heart from toil and strife and fear 
To gaze upon the constellations till 
This finite void that infinite doth fill. 
Let the great dreams of my departed prime, 
The cosmic passions that once with awe did thrill. 
The ripest thoughts Astronomy can chime, 
All mingle and upon my spirit spill 
The contemplations of majesties sublime 
Eternity hath spread around these doors of time. 

Oh Night! Oh Night! Oh most beloved Night! 
Mother and nurse and prophet of the child 
Designed to rise to being's awful height 
Upon this base thou hast so glorious piled! 
Oh Magnanimous! Majestic! Undefiled! 
This solitude and silence is delight 
In thy society, and man so day-beguiled 
Becomes with thee the true cosmopolite 
In the universe that has upon him smiled. 
Few, few are dearer than thou unto our sight, 
Oh most beloved Night! Oh most beloved Night! 



ART AND OBLIVION. 

"An artist thou must be 

Or to oblivion go. 
A famed futurity 

None but the artists know. 
Art maketh life divine 

And from all death doth free. 
The art and artists shine 

To all eternity." 

"All artists and all art 

Are going down the deep. 
Noon's splendors swift depart, 

Stars fall from heaven's steep. 
All artists, arts and fame 

Into oblivion go. 
The night from whence all came 

Engulfs them swift or slow.' 



98 



OH LET THE THINKER THINK. 

The hour of birth is only when 

The thinker does awake; 
When spirit slumb'ring in its den 

Feels nature's mighty shake. 
On youth's half-opened, blinded eyes 

Oh spill some fiery ink! 
Till on his spirit written lies: 

"Oh let the thinker think." 

The world is old and we are young, 

Time tough and we are weak. 
Since none return the way they sprung, 

What then but victory seek? 
When up against it striking hard 

The tangled, knotted kink. 
Sit down, sit down, my fellow pard, 

And let the thinker think. 

The world was but a dragon den 

For old, primeval man. 
Behold it now! Lift up thy ken! 

The thinker did it plan. 
Thy problems soon will be a song. 

Soul rise and foes will sink 
If thou wilt join the wiser throng 

Who let the thinker think. 

Ideal worlds are infinite 

And brighter than the morn. 
They wait upon some mortal wit 

To bring them to be born. 
Born they will be though millions blind 

Their sun-like glories blink; 
But those reveal them to their kind 

Who let the thinker think. 

Oh write it down with golden beams 

Across the azure height! 
Oh write it down with silver gleams 

Across the starry night! 
Oh write it on the heart and mind. 

O'er being's birth and brink! 
Write, write it till the spell doth bind: 

Oh let the thinker think! 



99 



SOURCE AND END. 

Oh, it is wonderful 

The things that come to hirth 
Out of this blunderful 

Chaotic blinded earth! 
Though pleasure is the end 

Of senses in the dung, 
Yet something doth befriend 

And higher things are sprung. 

Behold the chaos strife! 

Far worser worlds might be 
From elements so rife 

And stormy as the sea. 
But self unto the self 

Is brought by strife and wrong, 
Prom loss he findeth wealth 

And from his sorrow song. 

Out of the body, soul; 

Out of the senses, love; 
Out of the strife a pole 

To guide us far above. 
This being like a flower 

Doth burst with glory bright. 
Doth burst with heaven's dower 

And climbeth up the height. 

Far, far above the skies. 

On, on they pass from hence! 
How godlike do they rise 

Who spring out of the sense? 
Oh, it is wonderful 

The things that come to birth 
Out of this blunderful 

Chaotic blinded earth! 

A FLOWER. 

A blossom burst at dewy morn 
And died before the night. 

A beast that did all beauty scorn 
Fierce trampled out its light. 

But not before a passerby 

Did on its beauty feed 
The passion of a poet's eye, 

The hunger of his greed. 

100 



He turned the passioned rainbow light 

And beauty most divine 
To words and images as bright 

As love could see or sign. 



Then, then he flung them to the wind, 
To wind and earth and sky; 

Now up and down before mankinl 
They live and cannot die. 



A PREMONITION. 

Good-bye! My Dear. Good-bye! 

The words they must be said. 
Though burdened with a sign 

And fears as from the dead. 



A month must separate, 

But Oh what life and death, 

Sad change and direful fate 
Oft Cometh in a breath! 



Wide lands between us are, 
Between us rolls the sea, 

But something wider far 
Divides my soul from thee. 

A something, something dark 
Doth hover round my mind; 

A something bears my bark 
Where all is black and blind. 



It is a sad farewell 

That tears us now apart; 

These words sound like a knell. 
And break, they break my heart. 



Life's iron courses run. 
The hot tears scald my eye; 

Shall thou greet my return? 

Good-bye! My Dear. Good-bye! 



101 



REJECTED. 

"Wilt thou be mine. Oh maiden heart! 

Be mine and mate with me! 
I've vast estates and all will part 

In dowry unto thee. 

Behold the ocean's purple deep! 

It whispers, sings and smiles; 
For me and mine it secret keeps 

Ten thousand golden isles. 

These flying ships with purple wings 

Unto us 'Welcome' hail. 
Across the sea a message rings 

For me and mine to sail. 

There mountains, rivers, cities, plains, 

Have palaces like snow; 
All portals ope with singing strains 

For me and mine to go. 

There nobles Of an ancient race. 

Princesses pure and sweet, 
And mighty peoples virtue grace 

Both me and mine will greet. 

There silver, golden, purple gowns. 

Bright jewels rich and rare, 
And flower-like jewels as of crowns 

Both I and mine shall wear. 

From this far seeing mountain peak 

Behold a king's estate! 
All, all I give; Oh, maiden speak! 

Be mine and with me mate!" 

*'0h poet, king, soldier and priest, 
I've dreamed and dreamed of thee; 

Bui in the dream another dream 
Is dearer far to me. 

Hadst thou ten thousand times the wealth 

Of kings the most divine, 
And gavest less than all thyself 

I'd be no mate of thine." 

102 



MAMA'S ANSWER. 

"Oh Mama! Where is Papa? 

I've called and called again; 
But echo answers: "ha ha!" 

And mocks my eager ken. 
Down in the cellar shaded 

I've hunted and upstair, 

And round the lawn embraidcd \ 

With flowers, and everywhere. i 

Mid garden things the greenest j 

And mid the vines so sweet, j 

In places best and meanest, - 1 

But Papa cannot greet. ' 
In and out and all around — 

Mama! Why do you smile? j 

You know where Papa can be found, I 

And knew it all the while.' I 

1 

"Where is your Papa, Dearest? ' 

You fancy I must know. i 

What in my face appearest ; 

To whisper secrets so? i 

I know where is your Papa; ; 

He never was more near. j 

Though echo answers "ha ha!" i 

Your voice is in his ear, I 

He's present here and smiling ' 

And warm and sweet and glad, , 

Although perhaps beguiling, ] 

Your Mama seems so bad. \ 

His soul aloud is singing ; 

With music^s soft repeat, 

Its happy waves are springing ; 

Against thy soul to beat. ! 

His eyes with joy beholden j 

His best of earthly things, j 

His arms wait to enfolden ] 

Whene'er she toward him springs. \ 

He's close beside and glowing ; 

To give and take thy bliss, j 

Toward thee his all is flowing j 

And waiting for thy kiss." \ 

"Why Mama! Are you dreaming ' ; 

To talk in such a style? 

I never heard such streaming ; 

Or saw you so beguile. \ 

103 



You say my Papa's near me 

And listens to my cry; 
He ne'er before did hear me 

And did not quick reply. 
Were Papa's eyes soft flashing 

And arms extended wide 
How soon I would be dashing 

To in his bosom hide. 
But Mama! Tell your story! 

I see it in your eyes; 
I see some shining glory 

Is dancing with surprise." 

"Where is your Papa, Dearest? 

If you would wish such lore 
Come to my heart the nearest 

The mother heart has bore. 
Oh arms, Oh arms enf olden! 

Enfold, enfold her tight! 
A treasure more than golden 

Oh clasp her with thy might! 
Oh cradle arms parental! 

The giant strength ye loan 
With passion strong but gentle. 

Oh hold her as your own! 
Still dearer, love, and dearer, 

The distance must be less! 
Still nearer, child, and nearer 

Still closer on me press! 
Still on my bosom deeper! 

Still farther farther in! 
Still more. Oh draw and keep her 

Than she before has been! 
Oh body break between us! 

Oh flesh, dissolve away! 
Oh mortal veils that screen us, 

Divide, divide I pray! 
Open, Oh spirits' portal! 

Oh hearts together flow! 
Oh essence most immortal. 

Grow, grow together, grow! 
Oh life's divinest passion, 

Oh love with thy desire. 
This maid in heaven's fashion 

Draw nigher, nigher, nigher! 

104 



My being now is burning 
Wtih fervors like the sun, 

This, this is all my yearning. 
One, one, forever one! 

And now from these embraces, 

Come, tell me what you've found! 
'Liove,' and 'in love,' are places 
Where royal truths abound." 

"Oh Mama! What a beating 

Was in that deep embrace. 
Repeating and repeating 

Upon my heart and face! 
Something in your breast divine 

Struck like a hammer stroke, 
Right here upon this heart of mine 

It seemed it almost broke. 
Like music with its measure 

I felt it come and go, 
I felt it with a pleasure 

And held its rich bestow. 
Joy, hope and thine own yearning 

Seemed then to flood my soul; 
Now through my being burning 

I feel life onward roll. 
Oh Mama! I am guessing 

The story thou canst part; 
Thy eyes, they are confessing 

That Papa is thy heart." 

"Yes! That is your Papa, Dearest. 

He entered in my heart, 
^nd this which there appearest 

Is all his rich impart. 
His thinking and his feeling. 

His life and love and might 
Are in me and unsealing 

A sweetness past delight. 
The passion and the pleasure. 

The fiery, fervent glow, 
The joy and vital treasure 

Of heaven's best bestow. 
Are in his soul enshrinest, 

And he within my heart, 
And in them both divinest, 

Oh beloved child thou art!" 

10'5 



NATURE HELPS. 

The Wind saw Strength and Beauty fair 
And laughed in wildest glee. 
"I'll wed them one, true one I swear." 
And on them bounded free. 

Though firm he stood he muttered hard: 
"It blows a perfect gale. 
I fear for you, my gentle pard; 
You carry too much sail." 

"Oh don't mind me! I have no fear; 

The sail clings to the mast. 
Your arm so swift and strong and near 

Will hold me safe and fast." 

And now a ship is on the sea 

With noble mast and sail, 
And precious cargos with them be 

As drives the gentle gale. 



NATURE'S BOUQUET. 

Old Nature smiled and sent to me 

A rare bouquet of flowers. 
She knew I loved the beautiful, 
But bound in courses dutiful. 
Still loved her though so sootyful 

I battled with the hours. 

When I came in and saw the sight 

I stood in blank surprise. 
Something within the deep in me, 
A higher soul asleep in me 
With sudden start did leap in me 

Like visions on the eyes. 

Quick down I sat with hungry greed 

Before the banquet feast. 
I drank the most divine in life; 
It seemed the very vine of life 
Was crunching out the wine of life 

Unto a poet priest. 

The green was gladdest, growing green, 
The white was heaven's white, 

The red, purple and golden hues. 

Pinks, lavenders and olden blues, 

All vital with unfolden dews 
Did quicken with delight. 

106 



The fragile, fair and fondest forms 

Seemed summer elfins nigh; 
And soon the fairies dancing gay, 
With backward, sideward prancing gay, 
And singing, smiling, glancing gay, 
Waltzed right across my eye. 

But Oh, the fragrance, fragrance sweet! 

It seemed the breath of life. 
I passed beyond the portal dreams, 
Beheld the high, immortal dreams, 
Lived in majestic, courtal dreams 

With passions rich and rife. 

With magic soon the flowers divine 

Took on a rarer grace. 
The dream of all the dreams of life 
Eclipsed all rainbow gleams of life 
With smiles that were the creams of life 

Stood with me face to face. 

And then I gathered up the flowers 

That had my spirit blest; 
And with a smile, a touch, a bliss. 
No lover thinks too much amiss. 
And crimsoned with just such a kiss 

I pinned them on her breast. 



THE DANDELION. 

In spring, there rises up 

A spirit green and glad. 
Nature giveth him to sup 

The wines that cure the sad, 
The foaming, sparkling, brimming cup 

That sends him on as mad. 

On, on along the way 

Where buds and blossoms burst, 
Where vital perfumes play 

And flowers for beauty thirst, 
I go dancing, dancing and as gay 

As song with music versed. 

Then the Mother says to me: 

"There is the dandelion. 
Could you picture what I see. 

Put in form the grace divine, 

107 



Tlie passion feel and free 

With images that shine, 
A royal poet thou wouldst be, 

A joy to me and mine." 

Dandelion, Oh Dandelion 

That doth from earth awake! 
Warming airs are like a wine 

And doth thy trances break. 
The breath of spring is life divine 

That life doth drunken make. 

It yet is early spring. 

The vines are scarcely green, 
The blossoms hardly wing, 

The gardens yet are lean. 
But if the sun his life should run 

Then thou art sudden seen. 

Thou springest out of earth 

As by a magic feat; 
A golden, golden birth 

That Nature loves to greet; 
Both heaven and earth with drunken mirth 

Into thy bosom beat. 

Soon thou art everywhere 

In field and street and lawn. 
Drinking deep the vital air 

That fills the dewy dawn. 
And op'ning bare the sun to snare 

And closing if withdrawn. 

A host of circles bright, 

More yellow than our gold, 
Op'ning in our very sight 

A soul that doth unfold 
Joy, beauty, pleasure and delight 

To natures young and old. 

Ten thousand seem to shine 

Wherever we may go. 
We forget the earthy tine 

And when sight is leveled low 
A sheet of golden light divine 

Upon the grass ye throw. 

108 



Thy sire was sure the sun; 

Could such a golden round, 
Such spirits golden run, 

Such golden lances bound, 
Unless in him they first begun 

Before they burst the ground? 

Thy mother is the ea^^th; 

Thou art of her a part; 
Her springtime mother mirth 

Is flowing in thy heart; 
She more' rejoices in thy birth 

Than in our mine and mart. 

Thy sisters are the flowers 
That grace the tangled wild 

Violets in their sheltered bowers, 
Rich pansies sun-beguiled, 

Brigxi-L buttercup on slender stalks 
And daffodillies mild. 

Thy playmates are the winds, 

The birds and honey bee, 
The butterfly that finds 

Her drunken way to thee. 
Bright buzzing flies and winged kinds 

Of creatures young and free. 

Oh Spring, divinest Spring! 

Life panteth with desire! 
The fountains thou dost fling 

Are mounting high and higher 
And dreaming as upon the wing 

Where fed with purest fire. 

Dandelion, Oh Dandelion, 

Her life within thee streams! 

Earth is drunken with a wine. 
Her passion glowing gleams; 

How could around ye fail to shine 
The images of . dreams? 

Old Nature in her sport 

Went down the way of kings; 
All the tinsel gold of court 

All the purple plush of things, 
'Twas just a royal wort 

And out her hands she flings. 
Ye, ye are jewels of the sort 

That to her breast she brings. 

109 



The little martinet, 

Oh. see him in parade! 
Your golden buttons set 

The man out of his grade 
His fringy epaulette 

And heavy corded braid 
Are only seen when we forget 

How ye are first arrayed. 

The peacocks of the town. 

They met a simple lass; 
She wore a flow'ry crown 

And robe spun out of grass 
Buttoned round and up and down 

She did them all surpass. 
The fashioned peacocks of renown 

With envy cried! "Alas!" 

Life's little fairy elves 

That are untouched by sin, 
With sly thoughts to themselves 

Hold ye beneath the chin, 
If butter patties shine, then delves 

The yellow metal in. 

The elder children blest 

With happy fancies roam, 
Adorn the head and breast 

Like kings and queens at home; 
So po\iring dust upon the lust 

Of every golden Nome. 

Young Strength and Beauty fair 
..ent down thy bordered lane 

Golden was the pavement there ' 
Before them and in train, 

They were a royal, royal pair 
With riches and domain. 

Oh common wayside weed! 

Oh birth that many scorn! 
The Mother and her breed. 

See magic in ye born, 
And from thy hearts doth something start 

That giveth grace to morn. 

110 



Down, down into thy heart 
Soul sinketh out of time; 
Lost, lost, unto the mart 

And found in life sublime 
That from the center soul doth start 
Forever to its prime. 

Down, down out of the world 
From loss and strife and stain, 

Out of the madness hurled 
By selfishness insane. 

Into the dreams divine and pearled 
That Love builds for her reign. 

Down, down in thee I sink 
And give myself to dreams; 

The thinker free can think 
Life other than it seems 

And for a moment drink divine 
The vision pure that streams. 

Down, down into thy life! 

Down, down into thy soul! 
Thy spirits rich and rife 

Doth through and through me roll 
And for an hour I round the course 

To being's starry goal. 

But Oh how soon, how soon 

Decay doth on ye grow! 
Your golden robes of noon 

Are changed to white as snow 
And lighter than a gauze festoon 

And winged hence ye go. 

Then just a puff of wind. 

Without a fear or sigh. 
The earth ye leave behind 

And sail the azure sky. 
Unto your course and end resigned. 

Unlike to us who die. 

Sail, sail the azure deep! 

Wing, wing ye through the sky! 
On, onward ever sweep! 

High, higher still on high! 
Your stainless courses onward keep, 

Unlike to us who die. 

Ill 



THE IDEALS. 

Ideals, dreams and hopes and visions, 

Spirits of divinest passions, 
Sunlike forms that pour derisions 

On the world and all its fashions! 
♦ From our youth and fires immortal 

Into being ever springing; 
Through the spirit's open portal 

Up to heaven ye go singing. 

There within the azure splendors, 

Soaring, circling, poised and glowing, 
With most glorious train attenders. 

On celestial courses going; 
Ye outshine the globes so solar; 

Ye are clothed in pure delightness; 
Like the gods and spirits polar 

Shining in eternal brightness. 

Dowered, sceptered, throned, immortal. 

Leading genius on its courses. 
Kingly, noble, honored, courtal. 

Feeding fire and fiaming forces; 
Dwelling on the steep of heaven. 

What a beauty on your faces! 
Scatheless by the stormy levin, 

Ye are godlike in your graces. 

Light and truth and power and passion 

Ye are ever on us flinging; 
Life is clothed in rainbow fashion 

And to heaven goes winging, winging. 
As the soundings of thy measure 

Fall upon the dreamer panting, 
Swift upon the wings of pleasure 

Soul goes soaring, chanting, chanting. 

But Oh, dreams divine and glorious 

In thy being, form and features, 
Signed by Fate to be victorious 

O'er the earth and all its creatures, 
Ye like all are frail and mortal; 

Naught escapes the ancient blighting; 
Ye and all things high and courtal 

Fall before this deadly fighting. 

112 



This vast universe so heightless 

Is eternal down descending. 
Curse almighty, sure and sightless 

All things down are ever bending. 
For an "uplift" all are crying; 

O'er a "fall" each heart is weeping; 
Few, how few are upward trying! 

What a host are downward sweeping! 

Earth and man and ideals purest. 

All are in one awful tangle. 
Strife alone the strife endurest. 

All each other slay and mangle. 
Being with impassioned forces 

Is forever downward drifting; 
There the starry, sunlike courses, 

Where the powers for upward lifting? 

Sense doth mother all the nations; 

Sex corrupteth every creature; 
Time and Life in all their stations 

Stamps it dark on every feature. 
Nature's ripest, red dynamic 

With a nether fire is glowing, 
And the torrent flood organic. 

Blasting hears in all its flowing. 

Want is like a power supremest 

Breeding greed and strife eternal. 
Earth and all mankind oft seemest 

Like a war of brutes infernal. 
"Here is earth, it is for plunder. 

Tear the life out of the masses!" 
This the creed. Oh who can wonder 

At the wars among the classes? 

And ye dreams, ideals and visions 

How could ye endure the battle 
When the curse pours such derision 

On ye as on worthless cattle? 
Time is but blaspheming revels 

Gainst the ideals in their passions. 
Life lets loose her insane devils 

Gainst the dreams in godlike fashions. 

113 



Out of earth's old heart of motions 

Comes the driving and impulses. 
What are poets, dreams, devotions 

To the strife that life convulses? 
Dreams the greatest, gods the highest 

Down the night are hurled and driven. 
Life is lost. The human sighest 

Through the night so lightning riven. 

Gifted souls w^hich ye created, 

Priests and poets famed in magic, 
For a moment high are mated. 

Then lament divorce so tragic. 
When Life's vision has departed 

Friends and toil can hardly strengthen. 
Soul and song are broken hearted 

When these shadov^s round us lengthen. 

Gainst this flesh and blood entailment, 

Gainst time's false seducing sirens. 
Gainst all struggle, toil and ailment. 

Gainst the death that life environs, 
Hov^ could ye but fade and vanish, 

Swift depart or slowly perish? 
Strange, Oh strange that we should banish 

Those whom life should love and cherish! 

First a stain from touch contagious; 

Then a shadow on the glory; 
Then a weight like heavy ages; 

Then the "fall" so famed in story; 
Then the brutal, blinded scorning; 

Then the trampling on your being; 
Then the beauty and adorning 

Out of life forever fleeing. 

On the old world goes on swinging. 

Tangled in the ancient curses; 
Other races come on singing 

With small change the older verses. 
Ideals, dreams and hopes and visions, 

Out of youth the morning urges; 
But old Life and Time's derisions 

Change the strain to endless dirges 



114 



MY PIECE OF LIFE. 

Oh Parent of this populated earth! 
Oh Parent of these mighty generations 
That clothe the globe and this exalted birth 
That climbs and crowns with majesty the stations! 
Oh Parent of those noble recreations 
Of supreme delight that Virtue prophesies 
Out of the mind and glorious exaltations 
That in the breast of poet souls arise! 
Oh Parent of divinest inspirations 
That oft beholds the ideal in the skies 
Far, far beyond the earth and all her songs and sighs. 

Parental Life! Wide, wide maternal Heart! 
Great Mother of this fire and flaming soul, 
Before from hence this phantom shall depart 
Why should I not with honesty out-roll 
The living thoughts man pays to thee in toll? 
Great Spirit that creates and uncreates. 
And evermore doth blind or wisely pole 
Revolving worlds and men unto their fates, 
The spirit thinks, the passions have no goal, 
All powers within jo:n being's vast debates 
And living thought and truth eternal silence hates. 

Stand up Oh Life! Pause on thy rapid course! 
Gather thyself and arm thee for debate! 
Thou broughtest forth from some mysterious source, 
Gave gifts divine, passions that palpitate, 
And sighted soul unto its ideal state. 
I've not been great; a common shoot and root 
Of life that seems the object of thy hate, 
Till thou dost seem a blind infernal brute; 
So stand thee up as I to thee relate 
The case. I challenge, I dare thee to refute, 
To hear and answer right and view the worthless fruit. 

Why are we born? Why are we ever born? 
What justifying purpose bids man rise? 
The long unanswering silences have torn 
Both heart and mind with most unlanguaged sighs. 
We question and strong pinioned thought oft flies 
Plumb up and down the noon and deep of night 
And scans the far horizons for replies, 
But never caught a word to ear or sight. 
Why are we born? What i,s it that denies 
A confirmation of this god-like height, 
A vision that would guide the wanderer to the light? 

115 



Why is this life, this glowing fire and force, 
Creating mind and heaven soaring soul 
Brought from the deep and flung along a course 
As blinded as the sensual floods that roll? 
God-like and yet thrice-blinded fate doth pole 
Us' on as blind as any beast of earth. 
How many a mighty spirit pays the toll 
Of bleeding thought, and in its sad unmirth 
Cries for a God, a providence and goal! 
Why is the soul, the best that comes to birth, 
The very thing that seems the least of care and worth? 

"Thou wert born for an immortality. 
The earth is but thy cradle and thy school. 
In creation spirit is reality 

And matter though like sun-bright worlds the tool. 
Life is thy nurse, and time is but the footstool 
To eternity. These constellations 
Are scepterless waiting the souls to rule 
And guide the spirit of their recreations. 
Stand up and think! Sight often doth befool! 
High heaven and her golden inspirations 
Have prophesied for man eternal destinations." 

'Thou wert born for an immortality. 
Some infinite, eternal sparks are guests 
Within thee. The earth is thy portality 
To the wide universe that forever breasts 
Thee round. These dark and rough unfeathered nests 
Where thou wert hatched, and sharper thorns to bleed 
Thee on the path of sense and self's behests. 
Are not all these my efforts kind to breed 
A race divine for heaven's highest crests? 
The infinite, eternal and all need 
Of this vast universe for the immortals plead." 

"Thou wert born for an immortality. 
Canst thou deem that that which wills and thinks, 
That that which glows with glorious reality 
Before eternity and all earth shrinks 
To nothingness as man's vast spirit drinks 
The sense of his own being, canst thou deem 
That such a nature down forever sinks 
When flesh is plunged in death's cold icy stream? 
Can this transcendency of life that links 
Thee unto God be locked up in a dream? 
In that great hour shall death stand up supreme 
And the great soul of man descend the gulf extreme?" 

116 



Thou preachest a high philosophy, Oh Life! 
But no philosophy without the fact 
Can stay the questions which the endless strife 
Cuts into man's quick spirit. When we are backed 
Against the wall of being and are cracked 
In manhood's strength, then anguish maketh right 
The utterance thy velvet hours have lacked. 
When compassed round, beaten by stormy night 
And soul itself is most insanely hacked 
Oh tear away restraint and let the sprite 
In straight, unvarnished truth unvarnished life recite! 

Why are men "born just like the lower kind? 
Perhaps we all, all but the barest few, 
Are pleasure born, and by the senses blind. 
Just like the brutes, plain, common brutes come through 
The gates of life. No virtue high and true, 
No purpose kind, redemption or foresight, 
Motives, prayers, desires, or passions that renew 
Man's offspring from the old, ancestral blight 
Comes to the hour the better to endue. 
Just nature, and nature's undivinest right 
Draws soul out of the deep and flings it to the light. 

How could the elements of such a birth 
Be other than the most unbalanced kind? 
The old, old evolutions of the earth 
Were sensuous born and deaf and dumb and blind. 
From such a source how can we dream to find 
The round ideal? Do not impulsions strong 
Drive unto death the spirit flesh entwined? 
Behold the earth! But contemplate the throng! 
Is not man driven, torn, tortured, undivined? 
Is he not wronged far more than he does wrong, 
And keyed unto a dirge instead of climbing song? 

Thus was I born; unbalanced as a boy; 
Object of powers that lifted, swept and thrilled; 
Oft drunken with the crimson life and joy 
With which my frame was cloyed and overfilled. 
I can remember; my spirit oft was stilled 
By nature with her lightning, winds and thunder; 
And often dreams whose magic powers o'er spilled 
Did wake surprise, joy, strength and awe and wonder. 
Drunken, insane, delirious and unwilled 
As any birth above or round or under 
I played at nature's door amid the strife and plunder. 

117 



Scon, soon to toil my spirit swift was borne 
To teach my hand to feed my mouth with bread. 
I was yoked up, of liberty full shorn, 
And harness-bound to labor's load of lead. 
But youth is blind; the sightless seeing head 
Is blinded by its passions of delight. 
I scorned the load. My spirit's wings oft shed 
The customs, necessity and blight 
And from far founts my flaming fervors fed. 
Need mapped my course. There was no wise foresight. 
The least resisting way seemed heaven's chosen right. 

Had nature then been of the wiser kind 
And at my birth but consecrated me 
A priest within the temple of the mind, 
The books and lore of man's maturity 
Had waked and fed and set my spirit free. 
Alas! Alas! The world's divmest thing, 
A book of life, dreams, lore and liberty 
With vital powers to set the soul on wing 
Ne'er mothers those mothered in poverty. 
Did then some intellectual parent bring 
High spirit fires to mine how instant did I spring? 

Thus up I grew, and when at length a man 
I woke. Spirit was born. Thoughts as lightning bright 
Flashed through me. Soul with a vast surprise did scan 
All souls and worlds and gods and day and night. 
Volcanic passions and incandescent white 
My being heaved and plowed down to the base. 
Earthquake battles of contentious wrong and right 
Hurled man and globe out of their former place 
And others brought of vaster scope and might. 
I heard a voice from out of time and space; 
"Stand up, stand up. Oh Soul, and this creation face!" 

When to myself, the world, and God I woke 
I felt the th'rst of knowledge. A vast desire 
To think and know into my being broke. 
The door was closed. A providence did sire 
The way to school and sent me with inspire. 
When others leave I hastened there to learn 
And feel the touch of that contagious fire 
All thinking souls into each other burn. 
The first three years were drudgeries that tire. 
And often did I spit upon and spurn 
The languages and lore that from the living turn. 

118 



But at the university was change. 
The living spirit there was fully born. 
Some mighty soul, o'er shadowing and strange, 
Reached down in me, and like a giant unshorn 
Jerked up to life the "thinker." I was torn 
By the growing consciousness and glorious might 
Of living thought, and life was like the morn 
As mind rose up the dewy splenlored height. 
I loved to read; books were delight and scorn; 
To think was joy; dreams flashed upon my sight; 
And splendors like the sun clothed all the world in light. 

Oh bright, poetic and most memorial days 
When I had time and friendship for great books! 
Ye come across my now toil weary ways 
As o'er dead fields the crystal singing brooks. 
'Twas there I learned to know and love the looks 
Of genius, for his eternity of thought 
Sank into me life's sharpest grappling hooks 
And bound as one who had each other sought. 
The world of man from those sequestered nooks 
Invited, smiled, transfigured, armed and taught 
The young cosmopolite for whom all things are wrought. 

'Twas there my young philosophies were formed. 
Man was the birth and heir of immortality. 
The golden sun and stars that round him swarmed 
Gave splendor to the earth portality. 
Inviting him to the high courtality 
Of the universe. A Father re:'gned 
Supreme, and made this frail mortality 
A celestial birth ages and worlds refrained. 
The powers and laws that penetrate reality 
Were servants mere, held, impulsed or restrained 
As morals justified and spirit-ends were gained. 

'Twas there, but not from there, I was immersed 
Into the moral, life's elemental life. 
The poles that swing the universe unpursed 
Their essence in me, and the colossal- strife 
Was like a chaos with vast destructions rife. 
At times I was wrapped round with solid night, 
Then split in twain by heaven's lightning knife. 
The thunders with omnipotential might 
Their curses rolled and damned me as the very fief 
Of hell. The infinite, eternal blight 
Athwart creation's face did wrap my being tight. 

119 



Few, few of all the world have dreamed the dreams 
Of that conviction, the ruthless penetrations 
Of that law, the reactions of those extremes, 
The effulgencies that burst, and annihilations 
Of all hopes before those thrice pure visitations. 
Oh the grief, the river-floods of crimson tears, 
Unlanguaged grief and insane desperations 
Before the slaughterings and black gigantic fears 
That fall on pride while mounting up the stations! 
The majesties of youth's ambitious spheres 
And my ambitious soul went plunging down the years. 

'Twas then and there the man designed to be, 
"Which Reason struck as her most glorious plan. 
In conflict joined with battle to be free 
From ths dark yoked and brute engendered man 
Of the evolutions' first primeval clan. 
There then began the struggles of that strife 
That swelled the soul with most expansive span 
And filled the spheres with elements so rife, 
A spirit wise who did the conflict scan 
Could copy down the epic songs of life, 
ThQ epics born and bred on suffering's keenest knife. 

Eternity and this va^st universe 
Were born within and round this finite mind, 
The passions, thoughts and conflicts great did nurse 
The spirit to the summit of its kind. 
The infinites of hope and fear did wind 
Their mighty powers on my unbalanced sprite 
And drove me fast, impulsive, fierce and blind. 
The man within that answers to the right. 
Entangled, struck, defeated, plundered, twined 
In this old curse resistless in its might. 
Battled its blinded way through life's chaotic night. 

Oft, oft I sat and wept youth's salted tears 
And often thought till thought and brain did ache 
And often scanned the high celestial spheres 
For some kind God who through the hour would break 
And my great need upon his glory take. 
I prayed in tears; I pleaded with a fast; 
My meat and drink most gladly did forsake; 
With vast desire upon the earth was cast; 
Prayers, pains and groans forth from my soul did break; 
All hopes and dreams were struck by blight and blast 
And only strength could face the foes around me massed. 

120 



1 lived, but life was just a living death, 
And torn and torn with deadly spirit wounds, 
A Hamlet blind with low blaspheming breath, 
I traveled round and round and round the rounds 
Of uncongenial toil. My thoughts were hounds, 
Like famished brutes of furious desire 
Leaping on me with mad ferocious bounds 
And tearing with the blindness of their ire. 
I cursed all things in low blaspheming sounds; 
I felt some strange and pure infernal fire 
That tortured heart and mind and mocked them when they tire. 

I lived, but life was just a living death 
As one by one life's great ambitions died 
While I watched o'er their last convulsive breath. 
The books for which my back was oft denied 
Were all nailed up and tne hungry scholar cried 
As if his heart was pierced with a knife. 
The orator of passion, power and pride 
Was trampled down by the eternal strife. 
The thinker bold, poet and dreamer wide 
Gave up their hopes, the mighty hopes of life 
And sunk forever down with tears and anguish rife. 

I lived, but life was just a living death. 
My two great dreams were torn out of my soul. 
A queenly bride that drew high heaven's breath 
And like an incarnation of the goal 
That lifteth man and doth his spirit pole — 
My heart! My heart! It pierces like a pain 
As memories pure of her upon me roll! 
The prophet high, the king of life's domain, 
The spirit pure that doth the earth repole 
And maps thB course for her far sweeping train, 
What anguish tore my soul when we were torn in twain! 

In slow, hard grind I rounded out tne years 
And often then to ease the endless pain, 
Led by some singer of the sceptered spheres 
I would translate the workings of my brain 
Into a song and bind the infant strain 
Upon my heart as a medicinal leaf; 
As sweet as is the soft and summer rain, 
As deep as is the rest of solaced grief. 
As glad as is the hope the guilty gain, 
As rich as is the gathered harvest sheaf, 
So music lent my life a little respite brief. 

125 



Time passed. At length I felt a sudden shock 
And stood aghast, pale, fixed and terrified. 
For there great Death, dismantled of his frock. 
Had come unseen and drew up to my side. 
He handed me his message. I was tied 
A moment with paralysis. He bowed 
And went. I read the word. I was denied 
Much longer days. Soon aches and pains did crowd 
Into my frame and on my strength did ride. 
The solemn truth, deep through my spirit plowed: 
"A few more days of life and then the midnight shroud. 

I gathered up the songs that life had wrung 
Out of my heart and give them to the press. 
But back on me as scorn and offal flung 
They came, yet though in unpcssessing dress 
Some of those scngs my spirit still can bless. 
Two other bcoks I sent into the v/orld. 
But one, not one did welcome them. The stress 
And strain cf life the singer round has hurled 
And feed the heart sad disappointment's mess 
1 turned me from great Letters' doors impearled. * 
Sang from and to myself the songs that in me swirled. 

Fragments! Fragments! Mere fragmentary verse! 
Just lines and words, mere syllables and sounds 
Of life and time entangled in the curse, 
And of myself, strangest of all compounds, 
Is all that I can write. Great power surrounds 
My spirit and repressive circumstance 
Strangles and blinds the song that often bounds 
Unto the height where solar splendors dance. 
I see and feel. Some spirit life expounds. 
I follow on as drunken with entrance. 
But poverty beholds and pricks back with her lance. 

Oh Poverty, Oh Poverty! Thou drudge 
To Life, and great brute mother to the earth! 
Unto the most thou dost a supper grudge 
While wanton Life dies rioting in mirth. 
Oh many and many a high celestial birth 
Strangled hast thou! If thou dost spare the cries 
And nourishest a transcendental worth 
Thou art too blind to see the shining eyes. 
Give me some time! Across this blighted dearth 
A mighty train of flaming splendor flies, 
For just a mouth of bread the vision pales and dies. 

126 



Thus am I driven round and round and round, 
Just like a blind and heartless old mill horse. 
The iron nurse has in her harness bound 
And with necessity, her whip, doth force 
Around and round the endless, endless course. 
Unto my heart and mind the seasons feed 
An anguish like the anguish of remorse. 
Fierce rebellions of my spirit daily bleed 
The little life and leave nie like a corse. 
All that I am, can dream of man and deed 
Is bartered for the price of my small human need. 

There's scores of songs within me yet^ linsung. 
Do they not come and to my spirit sing? 
Why is my harp so broken and unstrung 
To man's great songs of mighty sweep and swing 
When his great soul soars on archangel wing? 
I have not time. The mighty brain storm dies 
Before the strains the muses to me sing 
Can be translated, and sighs and sighs and sighs 
Upon the loss like tears and flowers I fling. 
But what are songs? What are our travailing cries? 
Life mocks the broken heart and scorns the bleeding eyes. 

I'm now a piece of the eternal drift; 
I've no theologies, philosophies or dreams; 
A worthless wreck the tides a moment lift 
As sweeping down Niagara's roaring streams; 
I've no ideals whose flaming splendor gleams 
And doth redeem to nobleness the hours; 
No passions, hopes, delights or loves or themes 
To feed their life unto my hungry powers; 
No god or heaven or providence now seems 
Around man's life that Life with greed devours; 
I merely watch the world from observation's towers. 

There's nothing now before me but the "If,' 
The great "Perhaps," the vast interrogation, 
The pause, silence and emphasis on the cliff 
Of being as the spirit's contemplation 
Stands up to scan this infinite creation. 
The earth and man and all that live and die, 
The splendors of night's flaming congregation, 
The golden sun and solar passions high, 
Eternity and blank annihilation. 
Now write upon the dark'ning western sky 
A vast interrogation of "what?" and "where?" and "why?" 

127 



The universe is now a vast machine 

Of infinite, eternal, unknown power; 

Gigantic, resistless, merciless and lean 

It giveth all a rich prophetic dower 

And at their best doth turn and them devour. 

She pledges vast but secretly doth bind 

Worlds, man and beast within the iron hour. 

I hear the wheels; the belts around me wind 

And draw me down the hopper from my tower; 

I'm caught and crushed, crushed by the monster blind. 
But dying murmuring cry: "Grind on, damn, damn you, 

grind r' 
The worlds and all that fills the spacious girth 

No more inspires and no more disappoints. 

High heaven's gods of transcendental worth. 

Experience, not thoug'ht, now disanoints. 

Soul from all ends the mighty strife disjoints 

And shoves her up against resistless fate. 

My frame is worn; my eyes, life's chief est joyance. 

Are failing fast, and on me is the weight 

No faith can stay by lending hope and buoyance. 

I'm broken down, but dare to stand up straight - 
And front the deadly facts, unblind of scorn or hate. 

And now. Oh Life! A silence would me seal 
If such a course had been to me alone. 
Unto thy fame the trumpets I would peal 
If to my kind a better course were known; 
But I have heard the everlasting moan 
Of this mankind that doth thy name impeach; 
Great multitudes are into being thrown 
And fill the world with my upbraiding speech. 
Oh mighty Life! Why is it thou hast shown 
To the world's hope these hopes of vastest reach, 
And at the last him wreck on this soul wrecking beach? 

Oh Life, Oh Life, Oh most prolific Life! ' 
Why dost thou bring such numbers from the deep? 
Why is the world an everlasting strife 
And this humanity flung with a sweep 
And seeming curse as scrap unto the heap? 
Why is there such a prophecy on birth 
And such a blast upon the course we keep? 
Such hopes of immortality to earth 
And such an end as all the ages weep? 
The generations, faith, hope and strength and mirth, 
The World, and Time and Thee from center blast to girth. 

128 



I see him there in yon far distant wild 
Like Jacob locked and wrestling with a foe 
That mocks his elemental strength and smiles 
In scorn on mortal's most impassioned glow. 
Planted, twisted, torn, tugging and bending low 
And straining to the point where nature breaks, * 
His spirit strains in streams of sweat did flow 
And every bone and nerve in being aches. 
Blinded he fights; reserves of strength all go; 
Night on him falls; the victor off him shakes; 
A faint unconscious mass, a moment's rest he takes. 

'Twas well, for hope I was a priest ordained 
In heart and mind to preach the glorious creed 
That out of this humanity profaned 
The sons of God for heaven's height can breed. 
Ambition high as life did ever feed 
My spirit fired to be a prophet real 
And out of earth, out of this murderous greed, 
To be and bring the man and his ideal. 
The prophet is the summit of life's need; 
Unselfishness is heaven's highest seal; 
And man and life and time to the divine should kneel. 

When forth I went I went as thrice insane. 
Religion was like a fervor of inspire; 
Like it the strength of my ambitious brain 
Though in disguise of heaven's rich attire; 
Beneath them both the fundamental fire 
Of sense, with fierce and passionate desire. 
Heaven, earth and hell, in quarters tight 
Fed into me the essence of their ire. 
Within the three for life and death did fight 
Until the frame the conflict did out-tire. 
And oft I felt the slumbers of the night 
Were dearer to my heart than morning strength and light. 

To give to strength, to promise, grace and hope 
But one more chance I went into the west. 
Oh sure, most sure salvation's doors would ope 
And some redemption from high heaven's crest 
Would nature break and give deliverance blest. 
If not: "I'll leave the ministry and find 
A piece of land and there my failures rest 
As I till it like a spirit lost and blind." 
I wandered far, but changes more oppressed. 
I preached and thought. New tensions did me wmd. 
Two elements in strife my narrow breast did bind. 

121 



I see myself as when I then did preach. 
Some universal spirit took possession, 
Stood me aside and a river rolling speech 
Came as a storm, a rainbow or procession 
Upon the guilt, the calling or confession. 
Exalted passion, elemental thought 
And eloquence presided o'er the session. 
Till all my powers were with contagion caught 
And hoped and hoped for some divine redression 
Prom those high thrones the resurrection bought 
And promised free to man if with repentance sought. 

Vain, vain. Oh vain! Vain was the vast desire 
To recreate nature's corrupted heart. 
To purge or pen the nether kindled fire 
The ages long to soul and body bart! 
Vain, vain were all the elemental part- 
ings of an elemental soul to find 
The thrones divine on life's prophetic chart! 
High heaven's gods were deaf and dumb and blind, 
And prayer was scorned as love is by the mart . 
Deep cried to deep, the kindred to its kind, 
But on old nature swept and life was curse entwined. 

*I sought the west in hope or else to farin; 
What providence, what chance or tragic fate, 
Or what malignant spirit did me charm 
Again unto the city, unto a state 
Where lawlessness threw wide an open gate? 
Environment must tell. Noctious atmospheres 
Will poison life and death regenerate. 
My higher powers battled like kingly peers; 
All forces low sprang up new and elate; 
Darkness, temptation, Gethsemane and fears. 
And the hell-born brutal strife of the eternal years! 

Broken and bowed, driven and swept and torn. 
Bleeding and bare unto my spirit's core. 
The lightning thoughts that from soul-strife are born 
My high theologies in madness tore 
And turned to facts, asking the dreams of yore; 
"What is this life? Does any really care? 
Is there a 'Father' in the storms that roar? 
Does providence o'er fate the sceptre bear? 
Is man worth aught? Is this celestial lore 
On great imagination but a snare?" 
The vast debates of strife pierced life unto her lair. 

122 



Then the splendors of firmamental brightness 
Inviting soul forth to the universe 
Were swift eclipsed, and black, primeval nightness 
Rose up to heaven and hung there like a curse. 
Noble ideals eternity did nurse 
Fell from on high like meteors dying bright 
Into the gulf that doth forever merse. 
Fears, gigantic fears, black, ebony forms of night, 
Gathered around and threatened worse and worse. 
Lost, blind, alone, a beaten, branded sprite, 
I struggled bleeding on cursing the growing blight. 

Oh Life, Oh Life, why hast thou such a scale 
Beyond the bounds our boldest spirit dreams? 
Great visions dark the granite breasted quail 
And torture forth the elemental screams 
As down we go to thy far, far extremes. 
Thou forest forth the powers that did restrain, 
Unsealed the storms, the night and lightning streams 
And God-forsaken did torture heart and brain 
On those machines with which thy passion teems. 
Oh infinite, most infinite the pain 
When moral intellect, fear, sense and ruin reign! 

How near, how near was I to suicide! 
I tremble now whene'er on it I think. 
Despair, remorse, my spirit then did ride 
And drove me on the edges of that brink 
From which few plunge but all at last must sink. 
Blinded most blind, impelled, resolved, restrained, 
For courage failed, or cowardice did shrink 
And backward turned. The curse my soul detained 
To drain the dregs that few have strength to drink. 
Night fiercer grew; storms, floods and lightning rained; 
Fear, shame, strife and remorse after me raving trained. 

Oft came the fear, the worst birth of old sin, 
The foulest of abortion breeds, insanity! 
My passions vast, like nature's fires within, 
Would drive and drive like demons of profanity 
Until I feared the last curse of humanity; 
I feared the curse would reason sudden hurl 
And sweep me as a rag and scrap of vanity 
Through chaos and the storms that in her whirl. 
My head within my hands would often be: 
"My brain! My brain! It's in a tempest swirl! 
I'm going sure insane, her ravings round me twirl." 

123 



I tasted then the bitterness of life, 
For I was plunged into the hell of hell. 
My powers augmented and in contentions rife 
Tore, tore and tore like demons in their spell. 
My passions like the mighty seas that swell 
Upon the rocks my being dashed and dashed. 
My spangled thoughts, sharp-toothed with poison fell, 
Upon me turned and gnashed and gnashed and gnashed. 
My conscience like a fury naught could quell 
With scorpion whip my spirit lashed and lashed, 
And every biting stroke the mortal gashed and gashed. 

When I was thus distempered by depression 
An old ambition came as a gentle friend; 
The violin rose on the dark possession 
And gave my powers a faint objective end. 
I knew my iron hands could never bend 
To such a skill, but desperate, desperate need 
Caught at the hope, the last that life would lend. 
I tried to play. The occupation freed 
Me somewhat from the powers that did me rend. 
If I survived the dark assassin breed 
Upon thy magic wand I lay my grateful meed. 

I lived, but life was just a living death, 
For thou, Oh Life, took on infernal forms. 
Frenzied and blind, this frame of mortal breath 
Thou flungest on the enginery that warms 
The spirit of all strife and blasting storms. 
Naked as death, an unmaternal brute 
Thou didst appear, and after thee came swarms 
Of thine own kind that forth from hell did shoot. 
All parentage of beast and bird and worms 
Superiored thine, and bore a nobler fruit 
Than thou that tearest thine, crown, breast and loin and root. 

I lived, but life was just a living death. 
No hope, ambition, interest or inspire. 
Only a worthless, burdened, cursing breath 
And many a prayer to with the hour expire. 
A chaos world full of volcanic fire. 

Great cosmic powers shot through and through with blight, 
Impulsions with omnipotent desire 
And mighty dreams clothed like the morning bright. 
And then — ^convulsions with earthquake blast and iro 
Would sweep my world swift as the lightning's flight 
Around another course through more tempestuous night. 

124 



In all the wide immensities of space. 
In all the long eternity of time, 
In all the reach of passion's wide embrace, 
Is there a dream more crowning and sublime 
Than man's ideal that doth forever climb 
The universe? Can splendor flaming suns 
And greenest globes that round them ever rhyme 
Produce a type whose virtue higher runs? 
Give him the ages, empires and spirits prime, 
The mighty conflicts that manhood never shuns. 
And all the gods in heaven his grace and aspect stuns. 

And yet this man, the only thing on earth 
That can redeem, that often doth arise 
To fellowship the transcendental worth 
That lives and rides upon the azure skies, 
This dream, thy promise, virtue, crown and prize. 
How vain, how vain, unutterably vain. 
And down the void that hungry ever cries 
Tliey swift descend as an ephemeral train! 
Born from the dung; they live in sensuous lies; 
Down, out and snuffed; trampled or worn or slain. 
Unnumbered millions go as shadows o'er the plain! 

How vain, how vain, how vain is all our life! 
How empty, windy, cloud-like, vapory, puff! 
A little round that gathers grief and strife 
And then the hour that doth our taper snuff. 
We are but dreams and made of dreamlike stuff. 
And just a breath, a little breath of wind. 
Though built of iron, granite and strong and tough. 
No searcher here can memory of us find. 
E'ven while here we often cry: "Enough!, 
I've had enough of life and time unkind! 
I would lie down to sleep and rest around me bind!" 

Oh where and what and why is this mankind? 
What brought them forth from the eternal nought 
To hurl them on so deaf and dumb and blind? 
What purposes of first supremest thought 
Have reared the world and then so endless brought 
The generations for such a worthless end 
As all the earth and ages vain have sought? 
Man slayeth man. He never knows a friend. 
Birth, life and death with vanity is fraught. 
Oh World and Time and Life, defend, defend 
The insane, worthless course of your eternal trend! 

129 



Now oft I stand upon the dawn of morn, 
Or contemplate night's flaming constellations. 
Life's rounded globe, man's majesty unshorn. 
Millions of suns and billioned congregations 
Seem but the flight of phantom generations. 
The mighty thoughts that sweep across my brain 
And feed me with the cosmic impulsations 
Before me pass as a meteoric train 
And shape themselves to vast interrogations. 
Through, through them all I hear the question plain: 
"Is life a dream, a dream of grief and gain, 
A vast reality, or vanity most vain?" 



GO, MY SONGS OF SOUL. 

Go, my Songs of Soul! To neglect and scorn 
As your older kin ye were certain born. 
But one in the world has a tithe of faith 
And what is a hope in the lightning's scathe. 

Not a friend have ye in the wide wide world. 

Can ye stem the floods where the gods are hurled? 

If from nature born ye will find your own 

Though the rending globes are against ye thrown. 

Thou art finding me; I am finding thee; 
Both finding the worlds that around us be. 
Let us find ourselves. If we find the self 
We can stand up straight and' forego all pelf. 

Who findeth the self that is most himself 

Finds a world of life and the springs of health; 

He findeth the self that is not himself 

And the vast round globe and her stores of wealth. 

To ourselves alone let us faithful be! 
Let us sing our songs wise, beautiful, free. 
They sing to the world and the forward years 
Who sing to themselves and the upper spheres. 

Let us find ourselves! Let us stand up straight, 
Front the world of strife and the strength of fate! 
In a world of wealth 'tis the crowning wealth 
But to stand up straight in the higher self. 



130 



